Art in the last place you'd look

As the first harsh autumnal winds sweep over Penghu, chasing off the last tourists, the tropical islands are left to hibernate through the winter, till the next spring brings back the cactus flowers, divers and beach strollers that have long frequented the island. This year, things are different. The meadows are dotted not with dying chrysanthemums, as in every previous November, but alive with a party of strange blooms, rolling dice, shining trails of silver feathers and other fantastic creations.

The plot of land, vibrant with curious installations, is the main stage of the Penghu International Earth Art Festival (澎湖國際地景藝術節), the first of its kind in Taiwan. The festival includes an exhibition showing nine installations, a documentary exhibition explaining the artists' ideas behind the works and a lecture on earth art that will be given this afternoon.

The cows grazing next to the exhibition indicate that venue is actually Er-kan village's Chun Shen Farm (群生牧場), situated on a cliff jutting out into the Taiwan Strait on Hsi-yu.

Organized by the Penghu Cultural Bureau, the event is the latest effort by the archipelago to establish its new identity as a home for art, after the Tungpan art village project in June. It also aims at attracting tourists in winter, an unlikely season for tourism development due to the islands' unabating gales.

Earth art, or land art as some call it, refers to open-air works that integrate their surrounding environs. The art form may be new to Taiwan, but it has a long history in Penghu. Chimei County's double heart-shaped stone reef (雙心石滬) and Suokang County's shi-kan-dang (石敢當), or demon-repelling towers, are two famous examples.

"The heart-shaped stone reefs that line the coast of Wangan and Chimei [counties] were ingenious fishing devices built by fishermen in the past. The tourists that later came to the island thought they were works of art because of their beauty. Land art is just a name invented by outsiders. The residents have lived among these beautiful things for centuries," said Chen Fu-chi (陳扶氣), a local resident and one of the participating artists.

The best-known proponent of contemporary land art is Bulgarian-born Christo, who has "packaged" the Reichstag in Berlin, erected a huge fence in California and installed other high-profile works.

To localize the event on Penghu, the organizers, L'orangerie International (橘園國際), made a point of recruiting artists native to the island group and asked them to express local characteristics. The resulting works reflect the island's social and economic situation.

Chen Shun-chu (陳順築) placed a light blue fishing boat with a long pole pierced across its hull in the middle of the meadow to create Boat-planting (植舟). The boat, a symbol of the mainstay of Penghu's economy, appears to ply the waves of blowing grass with elegant ease, as if transforming the arid land under it to a living ocean.

Sibala Landscape (希巴拉風景) deals with the current debate of whether or not to build casinos on the island. "The first time I saw the large meadow where we were going to work, it reminded me of Siberia and Scotland -- poetic places. I felt like Su Wu (蘇武)," its creator, Tsong Pu (莊普) said, referring to the legendary character who was banished by a Han-dynasty emperor to become a shepherd on the outskirts of the country.