摘要:This study examines selected installation artworks in the United States and in Taiwan in an attempt to lay bare the particular Taiwanese social and cultural conditions that are accountable factors for the differences in the two bodies of works. Employing aesthetic anthropology as methodology, the researcher has attended to issues of translation and transnation of the cultural field of Taiwan, the problematics of cultural nativism reflected in the selected Taiwanese artworks, and artistic globalization and its effects on the development of art in the local sphere. In addition, the study explores the lineage of today's installation artworks--namely European Avant-garde movements, environmental art, and earth art--in order to outline their major concepts and artistic concerns. Through the analysis of two bodies of installation works, one of the most up-to-date and hybrid of artistic formats, the researcher has uncovered the reinvention of traditional art and aesthetics and the assertion of cultural identity epitomized in Taiwanese installation art. There are two levels of heterogeneity considered in the study: one is the heterogeneity of style and media consistent with the format of installation works; the other is the heterogeneity of the multicultural aspect of Taiwan. These aspects of heterogeneity are then remapped into the ongoing dialogue between the local and the global where the dominative art expression and institutions are those of West.
