Making Memories
Conceptualizing Iconoclasm's Sociopolitical Implications in Contemporary Art of Taiwan
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chieh-Hsiang Wu
Unlike Western societies, where animism often falls outside the scope of modernity, Taiwan and other non-Western cultures maintain animism as an integral part of daily life. For artists from Taiwan and the broader Asian region, this distinction serves as a unique narrative tool to explore historical documentation and political realities. Many curatorial statements in art exhibitions aim to express this distinctive contextual significance. The concept of iconoclasm has its roots in early Western and Christian art history, with a journey that extends to the Eastern regions and continues into the contemporary era. Throughout this journey, numerous variants emerged, shaped by diverse circumstances. The concept is not only epitomized as damaging sacral images and adopting an offensive manner towards art devoted to beliefs but has also extended into the political realm. In this study, the use of iconoclasm has dual dimensions: firstly, to feature Taiwan’s contemporary art that appropriates religious images, and secondly, to explore the dialectics with the ‘modernity’ defined in the West. The latter implies ambivalence within the Taiwanese art scene as it asserts its self-defined modernity. However, this distinctiveness deemed to profile Taiwan’s or Asia’s subjectivity is confronted with legitimacy competitions between democratic mechanisms and divine powers. This study examines recent art exhibitions in Taiwan that incorporated or simulated religious rituals and artworks that parodied authoritarian political figures, exploring the paradox of multi-edged iconoclasm in contemporary art.
Matsu Art Biennial and Military Archipelago Heritage: Appropriating Multiple Mobile Affordances in the Global Artistic Field
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chia Ling Lai
Art biennials as socially engaging art strategies have now been widely used in the global artistic field, for transforming locals by alternative art and served as creative city tools appealing to art tourists. Currently the biennales no longer just stay in large cities-but also happened in islands, borders and rural areas-from Satouchi, Manifesta to Matsu. This paper focuses on Matsu Art Biennial of Taiwan held in military frontier archipelagos of Taiwan during Cold War between Taiwan and China, and also a border island with different migrant and religious history. Bathed with special weather and geographical conditions, military heritage and fishing food culture, Matsu provide special ‘affordances’ historically, geographically and culturally, for artistic engagement. Themed as Island’s brew and Ruby red after summer, Matsu biennial emphasis on the food and wine culture, linking nature with culture, bringing out the natural affordances many biennials in cities neglect. Drawing upon Bourdieu, Latour and socially engaged theories, this paper considers Matsu art biennale appropriate military island background as new strategies to compete in the global artistic biennale field with four mobile affordances from migration religious memories, military historic heritage, weather and transportation, to geology of rocky archipelagos on the sea. These affordances and cross-disciplinary attempts provide the creative base for socially engaging art projects. By examining the curating strategies, chosen artworks, responses of residents, visitors and artists collected by interviews, fieldwork and media representation, this paper will discuss issues of biennale studies, socially engaging art and art in the society.
Learnings and Missteps while Aiming for Reciprocity Through a Research in Indigenous Health and Art Education
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anne Marie Michaud
As an non-Indigenous researcher in arts education, I was called in the middle of the pandemic to participate in a collaborative project between Peru and Canada with Quechua communities in the Andean region (2021-2024). By linking arts education and Indigenous health, we sought to highlight how artistic co-creation could encourage dialogue between local health actors and community members in order to foster the mutual recognition of Indigenous ancestral traditional knowledge in health from a global health perspective. While the instigation of artistic co-creation activities in this project sought to foster dialogue and the need for healing in the face of the traumas of colonialism experienced and perpetuated by the local health system, several pitfalls and difficulties arose between theory and practice. While arts education proved to be essential to allow dialogue and greater reciprocity between the participants of this project, the journey placed me in front of several ethical questions. It is with humility and an acknowledgement of the limitations of my personal experience as a non-Indigenous researcher, artist, and educator that I wish to share an autoethnographic account of this experience of reciprocity and learning in Indigenous research.
