Political turbulence is often both fueled by and generative of acts of artistic dissidence; for this, the 1980s was the most consequential decade in the development of Taiwan’s avant-garde. The culmination came in 1987 with the lifting of martial law, the beginning of the end of the Kuomintang-led dictatorship that had cast its shadow over Taiwan since the Nationalists’ retreat to the island in 1949 following their defeat in the Chinese civil war. The fall of the dictatorship would enable the liberalization and democratization of the tiny island nation. But, as “The Wild Eighties: Dawn of a