888

Portraiture, Still-life, Landscape, Murals, Itinerant Portraitist, Old Master, Oil painting, Self-Portraits, Children's Portraiture, Yale, Yale Portraits, Davenport College, Davenport College Portraits, Sterling Memorial Library, Sterling Memorial Library Portraits, Women Artists, Women Artists NY, Women Artists USA, Contemporary Portraiture, Contemporary Painting, Multidisciplinary Artist, Installation Art, Artistic Activism, Public Art, Documentary Film, Documentary Film Award Winner, Mural Artist, Animal Portraits, Snakes, Snakes Portraits, Glass Sculpture, Drawing, Art Drawings, Commissioned Artwork, Taiwan Art, Taiwan Art Installation

888

From July 1 to September 30, 2011, supported by a Fulbright grant, I traveled to thirty-three places in Taiwan, primarily aboriginal villages. I persuaded 888 people from diverse socioeconomic groups and ranging in age from infancy to 104 to pose for watercolor portraits that I made using the camera lucida, a device for drawing that dates back to the Renaissance and that promotes a two-way exchange between artist and subject. When I returned to my studio in Brooklyn, the understanding I had gained through my face-to-face portraiture in Taiwan enabled me to create psychologically acute oil paintings of aboriginal teenage boys from my watercolors. These paintings and the complete watercolor sketchbooks form the core of a multimedia installation that also includes a documentary video, large-scale projections of photos of the subjects presenting their portraits, music, a talking interactive virtual sketchbook of the 888 portraits, and a mural-size map charting the dates and locations of each portrait’s production.

View the Oil Paintings

The Map of 888: Taiwan

A mural-size map charts the locations where the portraits were made. The distribution of Taiwan’s indigenous tribes is highlighted. All 888 portraits are shown in thumbnails and are connected to the places in which they were painted.

Sketchbook

Description: 888 included fourteen Moleskine books each containing sixty portraits in watercolor and pencil on paper and one Moleskine book containing forty-eight portraits in watercolor and pencil on paper. Each of the portraits is dated, beginning on July 4, 2011, and ending on September 27, 2011.

Interview

Documentary

“888: Portraits in Taiwan” presents the adventures of Brenda Zlamany and her ten-year-old Mandarin-speaking daughter, Oona, who serves as her interpreter and fellow “head hunter,” as they travel in Taiwan in search of subjects to paint. Fifteen of the thirty cities, towns, and aboriginal villages that they visited are highlighted in short segments: Hua-lien, Jialan, Dagangkou, Three Stack Village, Lan Yü, Qingquan, Mindoyo Bird Sanctuary, Kao-hsiung, Sandimen, Wutai, Tai-nan, Taipei, Taoyuan, Wu-lai, and Nan-ao. “888: Portraits in Taiwan” shows the diversity of the locations and people they encountered.

This interview was recorded and edited by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, on the occasion of Brenda Zlamany’s exhibition “Project 888” (Jan. 15–Feb. 29, 2012). The exhibition documents the adventures of the New York artist Brenda Zlamany and her ten-year-old Mandarin-speaking daughter as they traveled in Taiwan and persuaded 888 people, mostly indigenous inhabitants, to pose for portraits.