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.
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