Poster for Tomorrow, an exhibition showcasing local gender issues, was held in Taipei yesterday.
Poster for Tomorrow is the main project of 4tomorrow — a Paris-headquartered non-profit organization which organizes design workshops and competitions to promote human rights.
Taiwan is one of 12 countries in which workshops were held this year and the only East Asian country, with last week’s workshops representing the first time the organization has come to East Asia.
Organization co-founder Herve Martine said the issues discussed during sessions on gender rights with Taiwanese participants were significantly different from those in other workshops, mainly in eastern European and north African countries.
While gender rights discussions in those countries mainly focus on sexual harassment and the threat of rape, the discussion in Taiwan was more focused on gender identity within the family, as well as emancipation issues such as public sexual activities, bra usage and the “free the nipple” campaign.
Workshop participants produced advocacy posters on gender issues, with a separate session producing posters against the death penalty.
Gender issue posters utilized a number of traditional Chinese-language themes to challenge traditional gender categories.
A poster calling for gay marriage edited the “Venus” and “Mars” gender symbols into three pairs of the traditional “double happiness” (囍) symbol used at weddings.
Another poster edited the Chinese character for “male” (男) to symbolize women’s right to work — the original character is composed of the characters for “field” (田) and “physical strength” (力), but the poster replaced the “physical strength” portion with the Chinese character for female (女) to form a new character.
The posters are to be exhibited at an international NGO exhibition later this year, before being published in book form.
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