28.06.2023 – 31.12.2023
Soulangh Cultural park, Tainan, Taiwan

This exhibition is part of the ongoing residency exchange between iii and Soulangh Cultural park until 2024, including exchange residents August Honoré (DK/NL) and Ju An Hsieh (NL/TW).

The relationship between Taiwan and the Netherlands in the 17th century was established through colonial expansion during the maritime period. Taiwan and the Netherlands, which are both adjacent to the ocean, have similar land areas and populations. They are also two countries that focus on technological development in the world today. This exhibition will reflect on the aspects of history, humanities, architecture, living space, technological development, and natural ecology. Through the form of contemporary art creation, it will examine and reproduce the changes in Tainan in the past 400 years, as well as today’s voluntary or forced changes due to political and economic factors. Human beings move around the world, leading to changes in culture, aesthetics, and spatial landscapes. Today, with the rapid development of science and technology, how do artists use technological media to translate or reinterpret the relationship between past history, nature, man-made environment and other species, so as to outline the expectations of the next generation in Tainan and Taiwan.

 

August questions how technology affects our relationship with nature. Video, sculpture and printmaking feature in a process that often revolves around historical reconstructions.

During his Siao-Long residency, the manual process of lens grinding became central to a contemplation about colonial image production and its ties to the contemporary depictions of landscape around Tainan. In contrast to contemporary image production of tourists in Taiwan, the manual grinding of a lens is a slow process that does not in itself produce a picture, but a new way of looking. The VOC company was the first to bring a telescope lens to Taiwan. Although similar to a camera lens of today – there was no recording device to witness how Tainan District looked before the Dutch settlement. Holding personal memories with historical records, August develops a video where the past and the present images of Tainan keep opening up inside each other.

Ju An is a visual artist based in the Netherlands and Taiwan. Her practise is a continuous quest to trace the boundaries between humans and other lifeforms. This approach brings Ju An into a practise where film, photography, print and sound design are necessary for each their qualities. Through the exchange program between iii in the Netherlands and Siao Long Cultural Park in Taiwan, Ju An gets the chance to widen her continuous research on the colonial history between the two countries.

During her residency she creates an installation of images and stories about the formosan Sikha deer. The Sikha deer skin was an invaluable trade object for the VOC, and today the animal figures as a common symbol in Taiwan. But how is the life of Sikha deer impacted by the colonial past? Through Interviews and field trips Ju An follows different perspectives on the animal as a living being, a mythical creature and an archeological testimony to the colonial history and a contemporary detachment from nature.

The participation of iii in this exchange program is supported by The Creative Industries Fund NL.