Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalist

Prepared for a long time, the exhibition had documentary photography at its core and investigated the petrochemical pollution in Taixi Village, which was near the northern shore of Jhuoshuei River estuary in Dacheng Township, Changhua County, in central Taiwan. At the same time, the exhibition also included medical and scientific research, documentary film, and a theatre of testimony. Its purpose and creative style was down-to-earth and moving, resonating with the general public. In addition to collaborating with public health scholars from the National Taiwan University to conduct a scientific study on the devastation caused by the pollution, a collaboration with Assignment Theatre is still on-going and develops a theatre of testimony that incorporates villagers as performers, demonstrating inter-disciplinary care for the society. The organizer, the National Museum of Natural Science, proposed the question of how a museum could contribute to the society and intervene for reformation, hoping to discuss how the issue of “the interaction between the natural environment and human beings” could be presented without being too abstract, and could be “transformed into lively, perceptible circumstances of tangible life.” As a national institution, the curatorial team also re-examined their work in the exhibition and published two essays. (Commentator: LIN Chi-Ming)

Artwork Introduction

Traditional documentary photography is a special photographic genre: it combines images with journalistic writings to convey intended messages to the spectator. Through highly realistic images, the real world seems to be brought to the spectator. As photographic documentation of “being present,” when the real world is shown as “appearance” and becomes “representation,” to a certain extent, the risk of “decontextualization” inevitably arises. As a result, the events and stories of the documented images can easily be “concealed” (to borrow the words of Susan Sontag), creating a disparity between appearance and understanding. The mission of museum exhibit, in this regard, is how to bridge such disparity and “re-contextualize” the meaning of images. 

Since December 2014, the National Museum of Natural Science has started working with two documentary photographers: Jhong Sheng-Syong and Hsu Cheng-Tang, to produce and present When the South Wind Blows – the Documentary Photography of Taixi, which documents the life and suffering of the locals in Taixi Village located at the northern coast of the Jhuoshuei River estuary. Since 1998, the 398 chimneys of the Sixth Naphtha Cracking Plant in Mailiao became a neighbor to the Taixi Village in Changhua County across Jhuoshuei River. Every summer, when the south wind blows, pollutants from the naphtha cracking plant are blown northward by the south wind towards Taixi Village. Studies have shown that the villagers are thereby exposed to a range of harmful pollutants in the air and resultant health hazards. 

About the Artist 

The National Museum of Natural Science located in Taichung City is a national museum directly under the Ministry of Education, Executive Yuan. It includes various professional departments, namely, the Biology, Geology, Anthropology, Exhibits, and Science Education departments. Each department has its own professionally trained research personnel. The museum receives 3 million visitors annually, and is an important public space of culture and education in Taiwan. In terms of exhibits and education, the museum emphasizes on the interaction between human and the environment, and advocates an understanding of the coexistence and coprosperity between human and nature through different perspectives. In recent years, the museum has also focused on issues related to environmental protection and climate change, with the objective of furthering society’s understanding of the damaged relationship between human and nature. The museum’s current Director, Sun Wei-Hsin, is Professor of Astrophysics at National Taiwan University.

Huang Hsu, Associate Curator at National Museum of Natural Science

and chief editor of Museology Quarterly.

Huang Wen-Shan, Curator at National Museum of Natural Science, and Chair of the Biology Department.

Lau Tak-Cheung, Associate Curator at National Museum of Natural Science, and Chair of the Science Education Department.

Jhong Sheng-Syong, Chief Editor of Decode.

Hsu Cheng-Tang, born in Taixi Village, Dacheng Township in Changhua, and works at Taiwan Star Telecom.