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‘The Return of the Real’: Art and identity in Taiwan’s public sphere

Wei-Hsiu Tung, National University of Tainan

Abstract

This article explores the extent to which various art practices in the public sphere in

Taiwan constitute a significant body of critical interventions into community life.

Keywords

Taiwan

art in the public Sphere

artistic intervention

socially engaged art practice

community

Introduction

In Taiwan, public art has become increasingly important since the abolition of martial

law in 1987. Thereafter artistic interventions into the public sphere became a major focus

for cultural criticism in Taiwan and, in particular, challenges to established conceptions

of Taiwanese identity. Typically, public art produced in Taiwan since the early 1990s –

including public art projects, off-site exhibitions and artist-in-residence schemes in both

urban and rural areas – has sought to explore the diverse significance of Taiwanese

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culture rather than an exclusively Chinese identity and ideology. As a consequence of this

intervention, the relationship between artists and viewers in Taiwan has been changed

fundamentally.

The abolition of martial law marked a major political and cultural shift in Taiwanese

society, which was up to then anti-democratic, Chinese dominated and preoccupied with

the ideology of the People’s Republic of China. Prior to 1987 censorship was common

practice both in the art world and politics. Many artists as a result chose to live and work

overseas where they could fully enjoy freedom of expression. For those artists, western

modernism became a safe haven.

To begin, this article will attempt to give an account of the ways in which art in the

public sphere – i.e. ‘new genre public art’, ‘dialogical art practice’ and ‘socially engaged

art practice’ – can be understood to constitute a body of critical interventions into the life

of communities that are akin to dialogues both in terms of their processes and effects. The

article will then go on analyse the development of public art in Taiwan by discussing a

selection of case studies, including art projects, off-site exhibitions and artist-in-residence

schemes, all of which have encouraged local communities to enter into a closer

transformative relationship with their immediate surroundings. Artistic interventions in

the public sphere in Taiwan since 1987 have not only been a medium for artistic

production, their transformative power has also sought to connect to, and involve a wider

audience in cultural creativity; a process where the production of art becomes the

expression of community life.

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Going public: Taiwanese art after the revoking of martial law

The lifting of martial law in Taiwan in 1987 and its wider social, political and

environmental impact triggered a widespread reflective reaction among the Taiwanese

people. The impact was particularly apparent in the tide of artistic development.

Immediately after 1987, artistic expression consisted largely of highly ideological works

made in protest against the official political system. Their expressive form, their socio-

political topics, and the cultural taboos with which they engaged made transparent the

shift in Taiwan’s overall climate. Artists began to be aware of and to be concerned about

the gap between artists, society and tradition. Through discussions in the media,

including newspapers and art journals, as well as at exhibitions and academic colloquia,1

numerous questions were raised about the identity of Taiwanese artists. The issue of how

to interpret and understand the world from a truly Taiwanese standpoint became

mainstream thinking in art circles. As a consequence of the rapid political and social

transformations that began to take place in Taiwan at the end of the 1980s, many artists

adopted a conscious strategy of dialogue between art, the people and society (Tsai 1996:

22–43).

Following the Kuomintang’s (the ruling Taiwanese nationalist party’s) decision to lift

martial law, contemporary Taiwanese artists became caught up in and confused by

complex power struggles involving competing political factions. These power struggles

in addition to the Taiwanese people’s vigorous efforts to gain independence and the right

to self-government, contributed gradually to the politicization of issues of local cultural

identity. The politically charged question of whether Taiwan should or should not unite

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with the People’s Republic of China became inescapably entangled with that of the

survival of an independent multi-ethnic Taiwanese cultural identity.

As the process of democratization has developed in Taiwan over the last quarter of a

century, public opinion has been increasingly at the centre of debates surrounding the

future direction of Taiwanese society. The increasing centrality of public opinion has

brought Taiwanese artists closer to the Taiwanese people, not only absolving them of the

need to emulate international trends, but also allowing them to begin, in earnest, to

examine the relationship between their work and the immediate context of its production

and reception on Taiwanese soil. During the 1990s, an increasing number of Taiwanese

artists began to sense the importance of locating their work and its cultural references

more closely in relation to native Taiwanese culture and of being more directly involved

with local Taiwanese audiences. In this way, Taiwanese artists were able to stand firm in

confronting international art trends and in achieving the uniqueness of Taiwanese art.

The future task of contemporary art in Taiwan became rooted in shortening the distance

between artists and local audiences. The task of artists was to use artistic practices to

communicate with audiences in as direct a way as possible. The potential of art in the

public sphere in this respect is undeniable and has been readily accepted by artists, non-

official art organizations, and the governmental Council of Cultural Affairs.

The theme of the 1996 Taipei Biennial Exhibition was ‘Quest for Identity’. This

theme was intended to signify the search for identity and memory as well as the active

dialogue that was by then taking place between society and artists in Taiwan. Works

selected for the exhibition typically sought to document aspects of Taiwanese life and/or

related socio-political issues. The exhibition acted as a focus for the exploration of

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Taiwanese identity, which started to be presented as ambiguous or hybrid after the

revocation of martial law. The quest for identity in Taiwan has not been confined to a

closed circle of specialists and professionals. It has been an all-encompassing movement

that has brought about social cohesion and community empowerment. It has also given a

sense of self-determination to the people of Taiwan.

Within Taiwan, there is an established view, profoundly influenced by Confucianism,

that artists should contribute constructively to the building of society and devote

themselves to people and politics. The following statement by the art educator Ann Kao’s

illustrates this point: ‘The proper weight and status of individual creation are most clearly

apparent when art works are viewed within the corpus of cumulative, collective, artistic

tradition’ (Kao 2000: 259). During the period of social change that followed the

revocation of martial law, Taiwanese artists were therefore expected to adopt a position

of social and political responsibility. Within Taiwan many artists also work as art

educators. Their contribution and devotion to education have to a greater or lesser extent

influenced Taiwanese society for many decades. This is arguably different from the

position of western artists, whose established role as part of the unfolding of modernity

has been that of detached socio-cultural critic.

Art in the public sphere and ‘New Genre Public Art’

If we understand art in the public sphere to be part of an unstable and shifting set of

political, social, economic and material relations, and locality as something both

produced and shaped by an immanent (contemporaneous) set of cultural, social, political,

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economic and historical conditions, our experience of public works of art must be

characterized, as Claire Doherty suggests, by ‘a sense of dislocation – encouraging us no

longer to look with the eyes of a tourist, but to become implicated in the jostling

contingency of mobilities and relations that constitute contemporaneity’ (Doherty 2009:

18). Given this uncertain entanglement between public art and the immanent context of

its production, how and where, then, does artistic engagement with the public sphere

begin?

During the 1990s – which was the climax of socio-political debate within the

Taiwanese art scene – there was an increasingly widespread desire to make art that would

be displayed in public spaces rather than within the confines of galleries and museums.

Within a Taiwanese context, this move towards the making of public art must be

interpreted in part as a political act that sought to challenge the institutional censorship

that was still prevalent at that time by claiming autonomy for the artist. The emergence of

public art in Taiwan during the 1990s can therefore be interpreted as an attempt to

challenge discourses that had developed around art prior to the lifting of martial law

(Lacy 1995). This marked the self-awakening of Taiwanese identity in art circles in

contrast to monolithic Chinese ideology and also departing from the canons of western

modernism.

The move towards the production and curating of public artworks in Taiwan during

the 1990s is arguably representative of what Suzanne Lacy has referred to in her book

Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art as ‘new genre public art’. Here, Lacy

describes the core aim of new genre public art as ‘public engagement’. A range of similar

terms are now commonly used within an international context – many of them

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interchangeably – including ‘dialogical art practice’, ‘civic art’, ‘community-based art’,

‘socially engaged art’, ‘relational aesthetics’ and ‘art in the public sphere’. As Lacy

indicates, in recent years there has been a ‘worldwide exchange of practices, engagement

from various theoretical perspectives, and blurred lines between field – and museum-

based practices’ (Lacy 2008: 19).

As Grant Kaster has indicated, collaborative and interactive art practices directed

towards the world beyond gallery walls can be viewed from a philosophical perspective

as ‘linking new forms of intersubjective experience with social or political activism’

(Kaster 2004: 9). This ‘dialogical aesthetics’ can therefore be viewed, Kaster argues, as a

mode of practice and perception that facilitates dialogue and exchange, and that is

experienced by both artists and audiences very often in relation to community-based and

socially engaged artistic practices.

The notion of ‘art in the public sphere’ that spread throughout Taiwan from the 1990s

onwards also relates to what Jane Rendell has described as ‘critical spatial practices’.

According to Rendell, the term ‘off-site/site-specific curatorial practices’ (Cartiere and

Willis in Rendell 2008: 33) is more apposite to the notion of ‘critical spatial practices’

than the term ‘public art’.2

During that time, critical spatial practices were adopted by many artists and curators

whose approaches were interdisciplinary, performative and process-based. Such

approaches to the production of art emerged at a time when the political climate was

changing and when artists and curators began to take on board ideas of intervention and

socially engaged practice commensurate with Lacy’s identification of ‘new genre public

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art’ as well as Kester’s conception of ‘dialogical aesthetics’. As researcher and curator Lu

Pei Yi has indicated,

[…] the emergence of the boom in off-site art in the 1990s could be seen as

a complex and peculiar phenomenon that reflects Taiwanization and that

also became part of the process of Taiwanization. (Lu 2010: 13)

Going ‘off-site’ and, what is more, engaging with local communities to produce art was

perceived to have much more potential in terms of ‘criticality’ vis-à-vis the prevailing

socio-political reality in Taiwan than producing art within the confines of the art studio or

exhibiting art in conventional white cube spaces such as museums and galleries. By

shifting the ground of artistic production in this way artists were able to speak out about

the changing political situation and to do so through direct engagement with and

involvement of the public.

Among the outcomes of these socially engaged artistic practices is a demonstration of

the uncertain boundary between artistic production and reception. As Simon Sheikh has

argued,

[…] contemporary art practices have shown that neither the work nor the

spectator can be formally defined and fixed, we have also come to realize

that the conception of a public sphere, the arena in which one meet and

engage, is likewise dematerialized and /or expanded. We no longer

conceive of the public sphere as an entity, as one location and /or formation

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as suggested in Jürgen Habermas’ famous description of bourgeois public

sphere. (Sheikh 2009: 137–41)

In Sheikh’s view, art in the public sphere is therefore characterized by a ‘relationality and

negotiation’ that makes it inescapably plural (Sheikh 2009: 137–41). This has certainly

characterized Taiwanese public art of the last two decades, which has undergone a

complex process of multiple transformations typical of the wider socio-cultural and

political landscape of Taiwan’s post-martial law era. The mutation of Taiwanese art

started with a rethink of what constitutes Taiwanese identity through artistic production,

display, social intervention and audience participation taking place in a myriad of social

spaces and local communities.

Recent cases of public art practices in Taiwan

Since the late 1990s, the National Arts and Cultural Foundation (a major government

funding body in Taiwan), has acknowledged that projects and exhibitions outside the

museum space have been increasingly welcomed by the general public. What has ensued

is a tendency by the government to use art, or artistic projects, as ‘instruments’ to solve

local problems and controversial issues and/or as a way to showcase achievements

brought about by the ‘Community Integrating Construction’ policy.3 Unfortunately, the

results have not always met expectations and these strategies have often proved to be

unsustainable as a way of supporting local developments.

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The ‘Heart of History Outdoor Installation Art Exhibition’, which took place in Lu-

gang (an important conservation town in Taiwan with a significant and historic religious

community) in 1999, is, perhaps, the most controversial of Taiwan’s government

supported community art projects.4 The exhibition involved an attempt to revitalize and

stimulate the general public’s imagination of historic spaces, as well as to broaden the

local people’s vision of the future development of Lu-gang. However, attempts to create

a dialogue with local people through events scheduled as part of the one-year exhibition

triggered numerous conflicts and frictions with and within a community that had never

experienced such an outdoor installation exhibition in the place where they lived. At the

root of the problem was the failure of artists involved in the project to avoid offending

local cultural and religious beliefs. For example, artworks referring to the Buddhist

goddess Ma-Zu were interpreted as an attempt to represent the owners of a temple

dedicated to the goddess as greedy; while another work, entitled Wake up, Lu-gang

involved open criticism of the religious superstitions of local people.

This insensitivity on the part of participating artists was sharply criticized by Chen

Wen-Pin (a local intellectual) in two articles: ‘A Heart transplant by an outsider or artistic

violence’ and ‘Wake up, artists’. In these articles, Chen argued that the artists involved in

the ‘Heart of History’ exhibition, surrounded as they were by an aura of professionalism

and savoir-faire, had tried to ‘educate’ the residents of Lu-gang and that this implied

contempt for the local residents. In a similar vein, Lu Pei Yi saw in such attitudes an

attempt to propagate ‘cultural hegemony’ (Lu 2010: 25), viewing this as the main cause

of the tensions with local residents. In Lu’s opinion, what lay at heart of the failure to

introduce art into the local communities of Lu-gang was ‘the question of who had the

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right to speak for Lu-gang: the artist or local residents, and further […] what kind of

attitude an artist should have’ (Lu 2010: 25). In case of Lu-gang, an attempt to establish

mutual communication between artists and local people failed in spite of the former’s

attempts to engage with the latter and to establish dialogues. The project was intended to

be collaborative in its involvement of professionals from the art world as well as scholars

in the life of Lu-gang; but no artists or curators from the local community were invited to

participate and local people were insufficiently engaged through art education events and

workshops before and during the exhibition. As a consequence, the task allocated to the

artists who were invited to participate in the Lu-gang event as ‘outsiders’ became

impossible to complete.

As a year-long off-site event, the Heart of History Outdoor Installation Art Exhibition

triggered vigorous and sustained discussions and dissensions in the Taiwanese press. In

spite of the many arguments between participating artists and the local community, the

exhibition process helped the Taiwanese artistic community to re-think its stance towards

the production of art within public spaces in a more constructive way. The conflicts and

criticisms sparked off by the Lu-gang exhibition, including differences in outlook relating

to religious belief, prompted the Taiwanese art world to look carefully at potential

problems arising as a result of artistic intervention into public spaces and local

communities (Huang 2007: 20). Lu-gang provided artists and curators with a more

sophisticated understanding of art practice in the public sphere, the ensuing potential for

controversy and the necessity for an acute sense of collective responsibility when

intervening into communities.

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Since the 1990s artists and curators working within the context of the international art

world have also become more aware of the potential consequences of working with

audiences and participating in the public life of local communities. As Claire Bishop has

indicated in her book Participation,

[…] the three concerns – activations; authorship; community – are the most

frequently cited motivations for almost all artistic attempts to encourage

participation in art […] The first concerns the desire to create an activate

subject, one who will be empowered by the experience of physical and

symbolic participation. The hope is that the newly-emancipated subjects of

participation will find themselves able to determine their own social and

political reality. (Bishop 2006: 12)

Despite the controversial involvement of art in the public sphere in Taiwan during late

1990s, many projects undertaken since the turn of the millennium have proved to be more

fruitful to communities and local areas. This is precisely because curators and artists

began, in the wake of Lu-gang, to work more closely with local people who were

empowered to contribute and give shape to creative meaning. Authorship was no longer

the exclusive property of professionals from the art world. Instead, it was shared with

local communities, thereby engendering a new sense of collective responsibility.

Within Taiwan, certain types of urban regeneration have tended to fall within the

range of public art practice. There are, as one might expect, cases where collaborative

projects involving curators and artists in the regeneration of a city have been

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instrumentalized to the sole benefit of the commissioner, be it an individual or a political

party. However, this was not the case with regard to the temporary public art project

entitled ‘Beautiful New World: Hai-an Road Art Intervention Project’, which took place

between 2004 and 2005 in the city of Tainan – the first capital of Taiwan established

before the Japanese colonial period since 1895. The project was aimed at transforming an

area that had been ruined by a succession of mistaken government planning decisions.

Consultations with local people together with interventions by art world professionals

succeeded in turning Hai-an Road into an area favoured both by local residents and

tourists.

Tainan is well known for its long history, which is reflected by Hai-an Road with its

rich mixture of historical sites, ancient features and temples – the majority of which are

Daoist – many of which date back to the Ching Dynasty (1644–1912) of the Chinese

empire (Manchu, seventeenth century). During the Japanese colonial period, the Second

World War and the post-war period up until the 1980s, Hai-an Road was used as a

commercial centre. After the 1980s, it went rapidly into decline and was partly

demolished. During the 1990s, a plan for the comprehensive renovation of Hai-an Road

was approved. However, because of parochial political rivalries, this plan was rejected by

the new mayor. In Taiwan, the development of public space, more than any other cultural

undertaking, suffers directly from sectarian politics and the pitiful drive for power.

Local curator Du Zhao Xian could see how frustrating and even painful this setback was

for the residents and shopkeepers of Hai-an Road. Local people became infuriated by the

situation and many started to think that the area would never be returned to anything like

its former state. The Hai-an Road art project that Du implemented proved that this view

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was mistaken. Artists were invited to install their works directly onto the façades of half-

demolished houses and in free spaces by the sides of the road. They were encouraged to

make site-specific works reflecting, from their own perspective, aspects of local memory,

history, and the particular atmosphere of the road. Some artists also set out to offer a

critical commentary on ill-devised government policies by producing works that sought

to engage local residents and passers-by, inviting them to put forward their own opinions

and to develop their own vision for the future.

Consider here, for example, Wu Mali’s work The Road is Carved by Man (Figure 1),

which presented the portrait of an imaginary person in a heroic style, made through a

computerized synthesis of images of three former mayors of Tainan, accompanied by the

words ‘The Road is Carved by Man’ set out on the work’s plinth. The obvious irony and

humour of this work were intended to act as a critique of Tainan’s patriarchal politics and

the failure of local politicians to sustain their promises for the benefit of the city’s

residents. Another example is the installation Discovering Hai-an Road by the artist Chen

Shun-Chu (Figure 2). This installation involved the making of space for local residents to

present photographs expressing their personal perspectives and feelings about Hai-an

Road. To encourage people to do so, the artist established a photography award entitled

‘Discovering Hai-an Road’. The participants’ photographs were displayed on the façades

of houses.

The Hai-an Road art project was not just about displaying public art on the street. It

also involved a series of interviews with local residents, civic forums on the street,

conferences on public art and even street parties. The project brought the declining street

back to life, strengthening the self-identity and image of the local community. It is a clear

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example of an artistic intervention into public space within Taiwan that inspired local

people to contemplate and reflect on their individual and collective histories and

memories with the aim of re-empowering the local community beyond political

parochialism and sectarianism.

The Hai-an Road project is by no means the earliest example of an attempt to

stimulate local dialogue through temporary artistic intervention into public space within

Taiwan. In 1994 and 1995, the art critic and artist Ni Tsai-Chin organized an

environmental art festival in the suburbs of Taiwan’s capital city, Taipei. The intention

behind the festival was to set up off-site art exhibitions that would bring Taiwanese art

‘into dialogue’ with local space and audiences. In doing so, Ni wanted to open up an

‘oriental’ form of dialogue with nature different from that associated with western

conceptions of environmental art or landscape art that was also intended as a way of

bringing art face-to-face with viewers (Lu 2010: 16–17).

Since 2002, other similar public art festivals have sprung up in and around the city of

Taipei. Many of these events have sought to develop a dialogical ethos in recognition of

the greater potential for public discussion that stems from the critical issues raised by

site-specific and time-specific artworks. As a result, art world professionals and

audiences have come together to contemplate and reflect on the urban environments

within which they dwell.5 Curator and scholar John Lin Hong has observed that from the

1990s onwards, the expression of ‘locality’ in contemporary Taiwanese art has not only

shifted ‘from exhibition space to social (public) space’ but also ‘from content to context’

(Lin2006 : 73). This has meant that artists and curators have been made to address issues

that go beyond the technical challenges of on-site and off-site undertakings including

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complex questions relating to cultural diversity, cross-national perspectives and

localizations. Moreover, art world professionals have been exposed to the views of

audiences whose perspectives often stem from complex socio-political and cultural

conditions.

The production of art in public spaces in Taiwan has therefore not been focused on the

making of landscapes composed of aesthetic objects or the exhibiting of sculptures as

finished products in public spaces. The concept of public art in Taiwan has shifted its

paradigm – it is now primarily about exposing power structures through processes of

questioning and the opening-up of conversations between different individuals,

communities and cultures. The meaning of art in this context derives from its relational

qualities; that is to say, from the way it relates to an environment or a context, be it

natural, social, cultural or simply human (Lin2006: 73). Relational art of this sort cannot

be thought of as absolute. Such thinking is echoed in art critic and curator Nicolas

Bourriaud’s celebrated notion of ‘relational aesthetics’ (2002) as well as in Pierre

Bourdieu’s conception of the art world as ‘a space of objective relations between

positions’ (i.e. a field defined by power plays and struggles whereby producers strive to

preserve or transform such a world) (2002: 26). This ‘relational’ dimension is essential to

art in the public sphere (Bourriaud 2002: 26–27).

If we regard art in the public sphere in Taiwan as a quiet revolution that has echoed

the changing political climate and transformed the country’s human and environmental

landscapes, we can discern two distinctive periods in its development. Until the 1990s

there was more demand for the kind of social activism that takes account of the context of

art, thus challenging both the socio-political ideology surrounding the autonomy of art

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and the conventional notion of ‘art for art’s sake’. However, in year 2000 the opposition

Democratic Progressive Party (DDP) won the Taiwanese general election, bringing a new

political vision for the future of Taiwan. Grassroots culture became an essential focus for

questions of national identity, replacing the Kuomintang’s preoccupation with the

question of a possible reunification with Mainland China and the military tension in the

Taiwan Strait. Even though artists and curators remained strongly in favour of ideas of

social intervention and making art in the public sphere, they gradually adapted a more

dialogical approach thereby bringing into play more educative experiences inducing

participatory creativity involving wider audiences. Cultural dialogue could thus

contribute to social transformation while engaging directly with communities. In

comparison with previous forms of artistic activism, the latter development enabled the

contemplation of community-related issues of identity through the recalling of collective

memories, local histories and narratives.

There are numerous practices in contemporary art that derive from everyday life and

socio-political issues. Once art departs from traditional models and begins to merge into

the everyday manifestations of society, artists not only make art for themselves but also

anticipate intervening in, and subverting/transforming established social structures. In

addition, engagement and collaboration between artists and their audiences become

preferred approaches artists working in the public sphere. In this way, the field of

contemporary art is able to expand into society and communities beyond the limits of art

institutions and the museum/gallery system. This is akin to Joseph Beuys’ conception of

art practice expounded in his ‘theory of social sculpture’ (Mesch and Michely 2007). In

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Beuys’s view, artists have the capacity to transform society by the very ideas embodied

in their art practices and their public performances (de Domizio Durini 1997).

Such a view demands that curators and critics play a vital part in the making of art –

its conception and realization – within the public sphere. It is precisely when art moves

outside the studio and institutional exhibition space and becomes a process that it is truly

capable of involving the community. It is when art acts as a negotiating force in the face

of institutions; when it responds to social dynamics by addressing the needs of others;

and when it shows its collaborative and inter-disciplinary nature, that it proves to be a

meaningful open-ended and fluid relational phenomenon.

Ideas of ‘local fever’, locale, location, locality and place are becoming increasingly

important in the public sphere in Taiwan. The Rice Storage Artists’ Community in Ping-

Tong, a southern county of Taiwan, is a clear example of how art practice and exhibitions

can be inspired by local community life. This community project was initiated by a group

of artists who set up a residence scheme in the village of Chu-Tein in 1999. The project

ended with an exhibition in Spring 2001, entitled ‘Land Debate’, in which 23 artists

(seven locals and sixteen ‘outsiders’) took part. The main theme of the show was ‘land

and people’ (Lee 2001: 15). Traditional Taiwanese art has often focused on this topic in

relation to a historically agricultural society within Taiwan where land and people have

always been closely knit. The ‘Land Debate’ exhibition used a rice storage space to

highlight the local culture and history of Chu-Tein. Aspects of Taiwanese vernacular

culture were thus brought to light on its home soil by both local and international artists.

The activities of artists belonging to the Rice Storage Artists’ Community reflects the

culture of the Hakka people, a Han Chinese community who are thought to have migrated

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to Taiwan from continental China some 2000 years ago.6 Hakka culture is associated with

an agricultural tradition that places strong emphasis on the value of hard work; a tradition

that has not altered significantly despite rapid social changes in Taiwan in recent decades.

Following the industrialization of Taiwan during the late twentieth century, urbanization

became more widespread and the relationship between Taiwanese people and the land

became more complicated. The exhibition ‘Land Debate’ attempted to go beyond a

straightforward display of contemporary representations of the land by opening up space

for a more creative exploration of vernacular Taiwanese culture; one that celebrated the

specificity of local Taiwanese culture as well as differences between Taiwanese art and

that produced elsewhere. As the organizing curator of ‘Land Debate’, Lee Chun Hsien

stated at the time of the exhibition,

It is believed that the pleading for such resourceful development of art

should be promoted, and it is a critical point of time for the development of

new art in Taiwan. (Lee 2001: 22)

A key aspect of ‘Land Debate’ was that artists were given the opportunity to reflect on

their own individual cultural identities and on that of Taiwan as a whole in the midst of

the internationalization of art, economic globalization and the inescapable otherness of

culture. Only in this way could cultural diversity be truly achieved.

As Suzanne Lacy has made clear, attempts ‘to reframe an extensive body of work’ as

part of interventionist projects such as ‘Land Debate’ suggest that the new genre of public

art is,

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[…] not only about subject matter, and not only about placement or site for

art, but also about the aesthetic expression of activated value systems.

(Lacy 1995: 30)

The activation of such value systems as part of ‘Land Debate’ is strongly evidenced by

statements made by the curators, artists and locals involved in protracted negotiations

relating to the project. Consider here, for example, a description of the process leading up

to the staging of ‘Land Debate’ by the artist Chang Sin-Pi:

In the beginning, no one could believe what we were doing. No one could

believe it when they saw what we created in this quiet isolated village. We

went through a lot of negotiations, misunderstandings, debates, and even at

times arguments with the local people. But in the end the local residents

(many of whom were farmers) started to understand our ‘artistic language’

and creative vision; they became aware of the difference it could make in

their daily routine and could appreciate what artists have to say. 7

Ultimately, the Rice Storage Artists’ Community proved to be very skilful and successful

in gaining the trust of local residents and in integrating local power structures into the

project. In an essay he wrote on the ‘Land Debate’ exhibition, the exhibition’s curator

Lee concluded:

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The Rice Storage Artists’ Community has had a meaningful impact by

following the original purpose of art in a timely fashion and at the right

place. Besides the fact that local artists from southern Taiwan have

reflected in their art what distinguishes this part of the island from the

Taipei area, the work undertaken in the Rice Storage Artists’ Community

addresses the issue of how abandoned spaces can be re-used by art and how

this process can tell the story of the development of Taiwan’s rural

communities. (Lee 2001: 33)

The changes sparked off by artists in this village setting were not just about resurfacing

the history of the place and highlighting the North/South bipolarized art debate in Taiwan.

The real achievement of the Rice Storage Artists’ Community was to have lifted the

barriers between artists and society by making the effort to bring the public fully into

play in the making of artworks. In other words, what this artistic residency achieved was

to make art attractive, relevant and relational.

In more recent years, art in the public sphere in Taiwan has become a fertile ground

for interdisciplinary collaborations between, amongst others, art professionals, activists,

architects, urban planners, scholars, educators and civil servants. Art professionals have

had to adapt themselves by playing different roles at the same time. Artists involved in

public art projects have often ended up initiating and curating socially engaged works.

Wu Mali’s project, Art as Environment – A cultural Action on the Tropic of Cancer

(2005–2007) invited over 30 artists to take up residences in twenty different villages in

the Cha-Yi county of Taiwan. The project relied on public art’s binding potential to forge

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a community consciousness in spite of the complexity of local issues at stake. In their

jointly authored article ‘When community residents become artists: The discourse of im-

position and dis-position’ (Wu in Chen 2007: 106–15). Wu and her co-curator Chen Hon

Yi suggested that public art practices and the working of artists in communities constitute

a process of transformation – like a ‘fluid energy’ flowing into the life of people who

offer on-site resources with interactions and exchanges (Wu in Chen2007: 107). Here,

artistic intervention is not thought of as an aggressive invasion of communities; nor is

creativity considered the exclusive privilege of artists. In Wu and Chen’s view, art

professionals from whatever fields should always bear in mind that public art practices

and community-based projects are above all educating processes that foster social links

amongst people. Moreover, this form of art education is by no means a ‘give and take’

authoritative pedagogy. Art professionals and their audiences must relate to each other on

a dialogical basis and the working process must be mutually participatory.

Curatorial strategies for critical spatial practices

In Taiwan, curators started to work independently – that is to say, outside officially

supported institutional structures – from the mid-1990s onwards. This is also when the

idea of creative curatorship emerged within Taiwan (Chen 2010: 35). Curatorial

approaches are paramount for art in the public sphere. The questions then emerges as to

whether the curatorial systems that were refined following the abolition of martial law in

1987 to support site-specific artistic engagement truly acknowledge the conflictual and

changing nature of public space, and whether those curatorial strategies offer an

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alternative to the exhausted notion of ‘public art’ in terms of critical practices.

The exhibition ‘The Heart of History’, curated by Huang Hai-Ming between 1998 and

1999, is one of the first examples of curatorial practice in Taiwan that brings art into the

public sphere. Needless to say, this exhibition triggered controversies in the local

community (Chen 2010: 35). In his book Everyday Works of Art in the City Street (Huang

2006), Huang recalls his work as an artist, art critic, educator and curator, including his

curatorial responsibilities with socially engaged art of the late 1990s. Most interestingly,

his reflection on ‘the appeal of art’ shows how art can awaken people to new ways of

seeing their everyday life experiences. Here, Huang acknowledges that while art has the

potential to create some sort of ‘carnival’ atmosphere, it is also likely to re-ignite – at

least in the first instance – serious underlying social conflicts (Huang 2007: 20). As a

curator, Huang was well aware that as part of community-based projects he should

continue to stimulate audience participation, artistic experimentation and the questioning

of assumptions. For Huang, the point of community-based working is,

to lead the whole process in the right direction and to integrate local people

from different perspectives – the hidden ground for a project. As I gradually

changed my role and way of curation, I started to realize this. (Huang 2007:

21)

According to curator Amy Chen, this period also corresponded with a time when art as a

social intervention became a topic of discussion from a curatorial perspective, with the

24

effect that off-site curating has become increasingly popular since the mid-1990s. In her

own words,

The intention is to bring art out of the museum, and the political implications

of interventions often arise through interaction after the exhibition is open to

the public. (Chen 2010: 35)

Recent curatorial strategies for developing art in the public sphere show a clear will to

induce direct contact with people as well as cross-disciplinary integration to deal with

problems of location and group differences such as gender, age, labour conditions or

social status. In the past 30 years Taiwanese society has, according to Chen,

[…] evolved from extreme conservatism and repression to a celebration of

liberation and of liberal relationships between a variety of art forms and

society. (Chen 2010: 37)

There is now a proper ‘inter-subjectivity’, so to speak, taking place as a process of

democratization within communities, the art world and all its participants (Chen 2010: 37).

This is communication and mutual understanding at work, rather than a dualistic

conflictual movement whereby art and people are brought into opposition with one other.

This is also what makes possible a healthy conception of national identity in the context

of Taiwan, corresponding to Benedict Anderson’s notion of ‘imagined communities’

(Anderson 1983) – i.e. socially constructed communities that are ‘imagined’ by people

25

who develop a sense of belonging. Art practice in the public sphere can therefore play a

crucial role in fashioning that inter-subjectivity for the sake of re-imagining a new

community.

Beyond the dialectics of localism and internationalism: The return of the real

As Hal Foster has argued, the cult of ‘abjection’ signalled a generational reaction against

an impasse in which art became embroiled in cultural conflict (Foster 1993). Foster

suggests that an interest in abjection – i.e. that which is expelled from identity as an un-

representable excess or reminder – led younger artists to break out of the left/right

stalemate over identity politics in favour of what he called a ‘return of the real’. For

Foster, avant-gardist practices and theories in the context of postmodernism are returning

to the concrete realities of social life and bodily existence expressed in modernism. If the

radicalism of the historical avant-garde failed, it has nonetheless allowed the

postmodernist neo-avant-garde to critically engage with ‘social sites’ and ‘actual bodies’.

Of course, the context of Taiwan is very different from that which Foster had in mind, i.e.

twentieth-century western culture. At the same time, it is precisely by returning to the

real, that is to say, to the concrete relational elements that make communities what they

are, that art in the public sphere can indeed help us build a sense of community. It is by

making all of us reflect on how we relate to the past, how we plan our future, and how we

handle present grassroots critical issues that art in the public sphere can contribute to the

shaping of cultural identities. Interestingly, most artists’ practices in the community art

movements of the 1970s in the United Kingdom are echoed in this (contemporary)

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conception of art in the public sphere. This also applies to the public art debates that took

place in America during the same period and that influenced significantly the 1990s

Taiwanese artists who tried to challenge established customs.

As Carol Hanisch puts it, ‘the personal is political’ (Hanish 1970); to which one might

add the notion of ‘thinking globally’ and ‘acting locally’8. This is precisely what art in the

public sphere can achieve: it makes global, national and communal narratives accessible

at local and personal levels. And just like many artists in the western world, Taiwanese

public artists manage to bring people into conversation among themselves as much as

with the outside world, with their histories and cultures, their social condition, as well as

with gender and ethnic identities. In the context of Taiwan, returning to the real means

that artists, curators and many other participants help to give shape to a sense of cultural

community through questioning and self-reflection that goes beyond the ideologies of

localism and internationalism, beyond the ideologies of authenticity and submission. This

is what the public art practices of Taiwan have been able to achieve. They have

developed a critique of anti-democratic politics and of the monolithic Chinese dominated

view of Taiwanese identity that held sway before the revocation of martial law in 1987

and which still prevails in the People’s Republic of China.

References

Anderson, Benedict (1983), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and

Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso.

27

Bishop, Claire (ed.) (2006), Participation, London and Cambridge, MA: Whitechapel

Gallery and MIT Press.

Bourriaud, Nicolas (2002), Relational Aesthetics, Paris: Les Presses du Réel.

Chen, Amy (2010), ‘Return to society: The history and politics of art as social

intervention – a look at Taiwan’s four phases of development since the fall of martial

law’, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 9:28-39

Chen, Hon-Yi (2007), ‘When community residents become artists: The discourse of im-

position and dis-position’, in Mali Wu (ed.), Art in the Public Sphere: Working in

Community, Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing, pp. 106–15.

de Domizio Durini, Lucrezia (1997), The Felt Hat, Joseph Beuys A Life Told, Milan:

Charta.

Doherty, Claire (ed.) (2009), Situation, London and Cambridge MA: Whitechapel

Gallery and MIT Press.

Foster, Hal (1993), The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century,

Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Hanish, Carol (1970), ‘The personal is political’, in Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt

(eds), Notes From the Second Year: Women’s Liberation, New York: New York Radical

Women.pp.76-78

Huang, Hai-Ming (2006), Everyday Works of Art in the City Street, Taipei: National

Taiwan Arts Education Center.

____ (2007), ‘Another way of curating interdisciplinary art festival: The technique of

collaboration between diverse artist communities and people’, in Mali Wu (ed.), Art in

the Public Sphere: Working in Community, Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing.pp.10-33

28

____ (2000), ‘Localisation, internationalisation, and art in Taiwan’, in Doug Boughton

and Rachel Mason (eds), Beyond Multicultural Art Education: International Perspectives,

New York: Waxmann.pp.249-262

Kaster, Grant (2004), Conversation Pieces, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Lacy, Suzanne (ed.) (1995), Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, San Francisco:

Bay Press.

____ (2008), ‘Time on place: New genre public art a decade later’, in Cameron Cartiere

and Shelly Willis (eds), The Practice of Public Art, London: Routledge.pp.18-32

Lee, Chun Hsien (2001), ‘Exhibition essays’, in Pingtong Cultural Bureau (ed.), Land

Dialogue exhibition catalogue, Pingtong: Pingtong Cultural Bureau, pp.15-40

Lin, Hong Zhang (2006), Sinthome of Post-Contemporary Art: Writings on Locality,

Taipei：Art & Collection.

Lu, Pei Yi (2010), ‘Off-site art exhibitions as practice of “Taiwanization” in the 1990s’,

Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 9:13-27

Mesch, Claudia and Michely, Viola (eds) (2007), Joseph Beuys: The Reader, London: I.B.

Tauris.

Rendell, Jane (2008), ‘Space, place, and site in critical spatial arts practice’, in Cameron

Cartiere and Shelly Willis (eds), The Practice of Public Art, London: Routledge.pp.33-

55

Sheikh, Simon (2009), ‘In the place of public sphere? Or, the world in fragments’, in

Claire Doherty (ed.), Situation, London and Cambridge, MA: Whitechapel Gallery and

MIT Press, pp. 137–41.

29

Tsai, Hong-Ming (1996), ‘Patchwork memory – mending the pieces’, in Taipei Biennia:

The Quest for Identity, Taipei Fine Art Museum (ed.), Taipei: Taipei Fine Art Museum,

pp. 22–43.

Contributor details

Wei Hsiu Tung is Assistant Professor at the National University of Tainan, Taiwan. During 2010–2011, she was Visiting Research Fellow in Public Art in the Sir John Cass School of Art, Media and Design at London Metropolitan University. Her forthcoming book is entitled Art for Social Change and Cultural Awakening: Towards An Anthropological Study of Residences in Taiwan (Lexington Books, 2012).

Contact:32, Xue-Zhuan Rd. Nan-Tzu District, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, R.O.C. 811

E-mail: weihsui@hotmail.com

Figure 1: Wu Mali, The Road is Carved by Man, 2004; mixed media installation.

Photograph by the author.

Figure 2: Chen Shun-Chu, Discovering Hai-an Road, 2004; mixed media installation

Photograph by the author.

Notes

1 The most important and representative art journals in Taiwan at this time were The

Artists and Lion Art. The editor of Lion Art was the first to focus on debates relating to

Taiwanese art.

2 The Practice of Public Art (Rendell 2008) includes essays by artists, critics and

academics who refer to works made in the public realm not as public art but as:

‘interventions’, ‘socially engaged art practice’, ‘political activism’, ‘service art’, ‘site-

30

specific works’, ‘community art projects’, ‘spatial practice’, ‘interdisciplinary activism’,

‘contextual practice’ and ‘social practice art’. Here Rendell argues that ‘[o]nly public art

administrators and officials seem willing to use the term public art to describe municipal,

county and state government programs’ (Cartiere and Willis in Rendell 2008: 33).

3 This is a translation from the Chinese ‘She Qu Zong Te Yin Zao’, which is the name of

a cultural policy that has been promoted by the Taiwanese Council of Cultural Affairs

since 1993. The idea behind this policy is community empowerment. Although, as a

result, numerous local history and culture organizations as well as local museums were

built with local natural features and historical references, it became associated with local

cultural organizations of the 1990s and was thus criticized for not focusing enough on

community empowerment.

4 Lu-gang has a historic temple dedicated to a Buddhist Goddess known Ma-Zu. The

temple is the centre of the local people’s life in this community.

5 See official site of National culture and arts Foundation of Taiwanese government,

Creative ABC: community art, http://www.ncafroc.org.tw/abc/community-

content.asp?ser_no=183. Accessed 21 June 2011.

6 The Hakka people (literally ‘guest families’ or ‘guest people’; Hakka language: Hak-kâ),

also known as Hakka Han, are Han Chinese who speak the Hakka language and originate

from the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangxi and Fujian in mainland China. Their ancestors

were often said to have arrived from central China 2000 years ago.

7 Taken from an interview conducted by the author with the artist Chang Sin-Pi in 2002

as part of fieldwork relating to the Rice Storage Artists’ Community.

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8 The phrases ‘think globally, act locally’ and ‘think global, act local’ have been used in

various contexts, including town planning, environmental planning and business

development.