In January of next year, the winner of the prestigious Asia Pacific Breweries (APB) Foundation Signature Art Prize will be announced in Singapore. In the running for the grand prize is Taiwanese artist Yao Jui-chung (姚瑞中).
An artist by profession, Yao wears many hats. The professor of fine arts is also a historian, investigative reporter and outspoken social activist.
“My work is focused on history and society, especially the political realities of Taiwanese society,” Yao told the Taipei Times in a phone interview.
Photo courtesy of Yao Jui-chung
Over the last four years, Yao’s time has been preoccupied with photographing ramshackle buildings throughout Taiwan for his latest project entitled Mirage — Disused Public Property in Taiwan (海市蜃樓: 台灣閒置公共設施抽樣踏查).
MIRAGES
It’s easy for a photographer to get lost in the beauty of old ruins, wandering the grounds and snapping whimsical pictures.
But it wasn’t as simple as that. In fact, Mirage was a massive, self-funded undertaking in investigative art. Yao recruited 117 of his students from the National Taiwan Normal University and Taipei National University of the Arts, naming their investigative task force the Lost Society Document (LSD).
Yao says the purpose of Mirage was to “document the process of democracy in Taiwan.”
He added that “the project was threefold in nature, comprising of rethinking concepts of democracy, education and photography.”
Yao, who is a firm believer of outside-of-class learning, sent his students back to their hometowns to scout out dilapidated buildings with the help of their families. Their task was to photograph and research the histories of these mysterious structures.
“We investigated each specific case — the location, who ran the space and what their budget was,” Yao added.
Together, Yao and his students compiled photographs along with facts and statistical data for over 300 sites. They discovered that many of these desolate public buildings were built by taxpayer dollars but were later abandoned because of poor management and sparse visitors — locals did not see a need for “modern” infrastructures within their communities. Over time, the sites became home to mosquitos, earning them the title of “mosquito halls.”
The mosquito halls were symbolic of hollow promises. Physically standing but lacking in substance and purpose, they were mirages.
DEVELOPING THE ARTS
The findings of Yao and the LSD were compiled into a collection of 200 black-and-white photographs and a video, all of which will be on display at the Singapore Art Museum as part of an exhibition for the finalists from Nov. 14, 2014 to March 15, 2015.
The goal of Mirage was essentially to raise awareness of the mosquito halls, and subsequently, to effectuate change in government policy, particularly in the direction of developing the arts.
Yao personally liaised with various media outlets from newspapers to television and radio stations. He also distributed picture books and materials about the mosquito halls to different branches of government.
Referring to his students, Yao said, “individually, we are a bunch of nobodies, but when we combine our energy together, we can become a very powerful force to push the government to affect change.”
This resulted in a promise to clean up and revive the mosquito halls. Some were converted into thriving sites like artist studios or performance venues. An abandoned junior high school campus in Beitou for instance, was revamped into a free public theater for performing artists to rehearse.
“In Taipei, it’s very expensive to rent these spaces. So it’s not too much, but it’s a start,” Yao said.
CULTIVATING SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
Throughout the investigation, Yao was impressed by his students’ social consciousness. Their work defied the commonly held perception held by many towards a so-called politically indifferent strawberry generation (草莓族).
Yao says that young artists “are concerned about the development of our society and use various artistic mediums to recreate and rethink art and democracy.”
He insists on imparting onto his students a belief that art should not be confined to the high cultured walls of museums, expressing support for young activist artists.
“From issues of identity to land and nuclear energy, young artists are choosing to interrupt society,” he said.
“Young people are living in a totally new world and they are using new artistic means to change their future,” Yao added.
LSD is also taking their cause overseas. Yao says that although Mirage is Taiwan-centered, there are mosquito halls in other countries, from Europe to Asia. He hopes that the upcoming exhibition in Singapore will enable viewers to see that such structures are a product of globalization.
In his many years as an investigative artist, people from all over the world have asked Yao about social issues in Taiwan. He uses these opportunities to compel artists in other countries to pressure their own governments into rethinking public policy.
“Through art, we can strengthen Taiwan’s foreign connections,” Yao said.
The Mirage project has shown how when working collectively, artists have the power to influence public opinion and policy, as well as spread awareness of Taiwan’s social and political issues to other corners of the world. To Yao and the LSD, this is ultimately more important than winning the grand prize.
By global standards, the traffic congestion that afflicts Taiwan’s urban areas isn’t horrific. But nor is it something the country can be proud of. According to TomTom, a Dutch developer of location and navigation technologies, last year Taiwan was the sixth most congested country in Asia. Of the 492 towns and cities included in its rankings last year, Taipei was the 74th most congested. Taoyuan ranked 105th, while Hsinchu County (121st), Taichung (142nd), Tainan (173rd), New Taipei City (227th), Kaohsiung (241st) and Keelung (302nd) also featured on the list. Four Japanese cities have slower traffic than Taipei. (Seoul, which has some
In our discussions of tourism in Taiwan we often criticize the government’s addiction to promoting food and shopping, while ignoring Taiwan’s underdeveloped trekking and adventure travel opportunities. This discussion, however, is decidedly land-focused. When was the last time a port entered into it? Last week I encountered journalist and travel writer Cameron Dueck, who had sailed to Taiwan in 2023-24, and was full of tales. Like everyone who visits, he and his partner Fiona Ching loved our island nation and had nothing but wonderful experiences on land. But he had little positive to say about the way Taiwan has organized its
Michael slides a sequin glove over the pop star’s tarnished legacy, shrouding Michael Jackson’s complications with a conventional biopic that, if you cover your ears, sounds great. Antoine Fuqua’s movie is sanctioned by Jackson’s estate and its producers include the estate’s executors. So it is, by its nature, a narrow, authorized perspective on Jackson. The film ends before the flood of allegations of sexual abuse of children, or Jackson’s own acknowledgment of sleeping alongside kids. Jackson and his estate have long maintained his innocence. In his only criminal trial, in 2005, Jackson was acquitted. Michael doesn’t even subtly nod to these facts.
Writing of the finds at the ancient iron-working site of Shihsanhang (十 三行) in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里), archaeologist Tsang Cheng-hwa (臧振華) of the Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology observes: “One bronze bowl gilded with gold, together with copper coins and fragments of Tang and Song ceramics, were also found. These provide evidence for early contact between Taiwan aborigines and Chinese.” The Shihsanhang Web site from the Ministry of Culture says of the finds: “They were evidence that the residents of the area had a close trading relation with Chinese civilians, as the coins can be
RSS