The Yilan County Government was alerted yesterday morning to an incident in which public works of art on exhibition in the county’s Jimmy’s Plaza were vandalized with permanent ink.
Attempts to remove the ink scribbles proved ineffective and the administration contacted the plaza’s management to deal with the problem.
The plaza, to the south of Yilan Station, is the first to employ themes from the work of Jimmy Liao (幾米), a renowned Taiwanese illustrator.
Photo: Wang Yang-yu, Taipei Times
The park used elements from The Starry, Starry Night (星空), A Chance of Sunshine (向左走，向右走) and The Sound of Colors (地下鐵), to give visitors the impression they were involved in the pieces and to create an artistic public space where residents can take a break.
According to the county’s business and tourism department, since the plaza opened on June 28 last year it has drawn more than 70,000 visitors.
The statues which vandals drew on were the male and female characters from The Starry, Starry Night, the department said.
The department said the statues must have been defaced between 8am and noon as patrols around the plaza prior to 8am yesterday had seen no evidence of the vandalism, adding that the call to the department reporting the graffiti was received at 12:20pm.
The drawings are circles that give the impression the figures have dimples, the department said, adding that cleaning naphtha had limited success in removing the markings and the department was worried about removing the paint beneath them.
“We have called in professionals to make repairs,” a department official said.
There are seven closed-circuit TV cameras in the plaza, with one directly across from the statues, the department said. However, the distance of the cameras from the statue might be too far to identify the perpetrators.
“We have turned the footage over to the police, who are looking into the incident,” a department official said.
Saying it was the first such incident that had occurred since the pieces went on exhibition last year, officials at the department called on visitors to refrain from damaging the statues or marking them in any way.
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