Celebrated Taiwanese artist gifts painting to Kāpiti Mayor

A painting by celebrated Taiwanese artist Jui Pin Chang that is currently part of Mahara Gallery's exhibition, Moving Continents, will move to the office of Kāpiti Mayor K Gurunathan when the exhibition closes.

Ms Chang, who is undertaking an artist's residency in Kāpiti over the next month, made the presentation at the exhibition opening in the Gallery on Saturday.

The gift is a token of appreciation for the reception she has received in New Zealand.  She described the visit as "a dream come true" and praised New Zealand for its cleanness and the kindness of the people she'd met.

Moving Continents is an exhibition based on stories of Asian migration to New Zealand since the 1950s, tracing the social upheavals and impact of migration across three generations.

Jui Pin Chang is joined in the exhibition by Raumati  textile artist and teacher Deb Donnelly whose Japanese mother came to New Zealand in the 1950s and Auckland based social practice artist Tiffany Singh.

Mayor Gurunathan praised the exhibition's relevance to modern New Zealand. "New Zealand is changing," he said, referring to the rising numbers of people of Asian origin living in the country.

Jui Pin Chang was born in Taiwan in 1964 and studied at Taipei National University of the Arts, majoring in traditional Chinese calligraphy and brush painting and is now a highly regarded contemporary artist working across several media. She has exhibited in galleries and held artist's residencies around the world and is best known for the creation of Bucket men, a series of art works in which buckets mask emotions such as fear and timidity.

The Moving Continents exhibition and associated workshops being held at three Kāpiti sites are sponsored by the Asia New Zealand Foundation and Kāpiti Coast Creative Communities. They coincide with Chinese New Year celebrations for the Year of the Dog, which will celebrated in Mahara Place on Saturday 10 February from 11am to 2pm.

Jui Pin Chang will be joined by Deb Donnelly and Tiffany Singh for artist's talks on Saturday 3 February at 2pm.