The Guandu International Outdoor Sculpture Festival, which began three years ago, was the brainchild of American artist and Taiwan resident Jane Ingram Allen, who has continued to curate shows and serve as its primary cheerleader.
While outdoor sculptures have become increasingly commonplace in Taiwan, thanks to the government’s policy of earmarking a portion of the funding for public schools and buildings for artworks, environmentally themed works and shows are still rare.
Establishing the festival at the Guandu Nature Park (關渡自然公園) just outside Taipei, was an inspired choice, given its focus on conservation and environmental education. Thanks to the park’s location along the Tamsui River, artists can choose from a variety of wetland, water and land sites for their sculptures, while the park’s flora provides much of raw materials used in the works.
The theme of this year’s show, which opened last weekend and runs through Sept. 27, is “Land, Water and Culture.” Artists submitting proposals were told their pieces should raise awareness about environmental issues such as global warming (also the focus of last year’s show) and sustainable growth. Scores of artists from Taiwan and around the world submitted applications to the festival, which provides the winners with airfare to Taipei, accommodation, a fee of US$1,200 and the promise of a lot of hard work.
This year eight artists were chosen, two Taiwanese — Lee Chao-chang (李朝倉) and Yang Chun-sen (楊春森) — along with Ashish Ghosth from India, Park Bong-gi from South Korea, Norway-based Briton Stuart Ian Frost, Dutchman Merijn Vrij and two Americans, Karen McCoy and Roy Staab.
They had just 10 days to create their works, including collecting reeds, branches and other material from around the park, working together with volunteers, many of whom were young art students from local schools. The arms and legs of some of the artists bore testimony to the struggle with nature that comes from trying to create art from natural materials, especially in the case of Vrij, whose arms were a mass of scratches from the reeds he worked with.
The eight works are spaced around the park, some on land and some in the water, but most are designed so that the public can walk around them or explore inside. There apparently was some haggling over water sites as more of the artists this year had designed their pieces to be near or in water, but at the press conference last Friday all seemed very pleased with their sites and with their works.
McCoy’s piece, Space for Contemplating Carrying Capacity: The Taiwan Tangle, however, is not readily accessible to the public. Located in a restricted area, it is only open to view by guided tour on weekends. She didn’t seem put out by the isolation, though, noting that her sculpture was designed to evoke contemplation.
“‘Carrying capacity’ is a term used by environmentalists to describe limits of natural area to carry people so that it is not degraded for future generations. It’s [her sculpture] is like a home, it has a roof and supports. The roof is in the shape of Taiwan, and I tried to form the topography with Yushan and other mountains ... The tangle is very important. We are contributing to the problem with everything we do, but we don’t know how to change ... I wanted to ask people to do a walking meditation and think of something they can do to help [save the environment],” she said.
As in previous years, one of the things that is so interesting about the sculpture festival is the different artists’ interpretation of the same theme. Where McCoy built a structure that is just a roof and supports, Lee built a more substantial home out of branches, soil and pieces of material, using a kind of adobe technique. His Flavor of the Wetlands can hold about four people at a time, though perhaps not comfortably, and reminded me of the “secret forts” my friends and I used to construct as children.
Park also created a small shelter that people can sit in, though his Breath is more womb-shaped. He said he designed it so people can look at earth, the sky, water and plants all at one time.
Yang’s Phoenix takes a completely different tack. He has created a fake fossil site.
“This park is a bird park so I created a bird fossil. Lots of people don’t see fossils, at least not in Taiwan. I wanted to make it look like the river had uncovered it,” he said.
Yang created the fossil of his phoenix by carbonizing pieces of wood found in the park, a tip of the hat to the burning of forests and carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.
Birds in flight were a source of inspiration for Vrij’s Flock of Birds.
“It was inspired by the way huge groups of birds fly in the sky. In Holland we have a lot of flat lands. It’s curving to show how the birds flew. You can view [it] from different angles,” Vrij said.
He noted that the park’s birds had already given their approval to his piece, by perching on it.
While Vrij’s work is linear, though a bit curvy, Straab’s Energy Center is all curves. It is circles over circles over circles, whether viewed from above or below.
“It’s round, lucky number eight ... The sun will make it change color, make it bright. The best time to see it is in the early morning and later afternoon because you can hear the sound of the insects and birds then,” he said.
Frost’s piece, In Deep Water, is a curving line of bamboo poles along the river’s edge, with smaller bamboo pieces at the top, almost like Buddhist prayer wheels. He wanted to make viewers think about how nature shapes our environment and how mankind does as well.
“When the water comes up with the tide, each piece moves. We as humans can move them if we want to, but we can’t once the water comes in, then only nature can affect it. Part of it is only affected by nature, part by us — so if we want to work in harmony we can either do something or wait to see what happens,” Frost said.
Ghosth’s Warning of the Globe is a literal warning about the impact of global warming. He created two worlds, one made of printed cotton to represent the man-made world and a second made of natural ingredients to represent the natural world, and anchored them in a small freshwater pond. If the water rises, the globes will disintegrate.
All of the sculptures are designed to be changed by the elements and eventually biodegrade, although Lee, who lives in Yunlin County, has promised his fellow artists to come back and make repairs to their pieces if a typhoon causes a lot of damage this summer.
It would be well worth the NT$50 park admission to make return visits to see how the works change over the course of the show.
The park is located at 55 Guandu Rd, Taipei City (台北市關渡路55號) and is open Tuesdays to Fridays from 9am to 5pm and until 5:30pm on Saturdays and Sundays. For more information, call (02) 2858-7417 or visit www.gd-park.org.
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