Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalist

The most praise-worthy thing about The Hidden South is that the curatorial team led by Eva Lin Yi-Hua is not only able to convince the county government to slightly step out of the old niche of how public art projects are carried out, they also employ a substantial and steadfast communication process to include local yet continuously overlooked living realms of the Paiwan, Amis and Rukai people, bringing different villages together under the structure of the art project. The massive amount of formal or informal exhibitions, performances and dialogues in The Hidden South are scattered in different times and locations. It is not possible for out-of-town visitors staying for a short period of time to participate in all events. However, the more important thing is the network collaboratively created by the large number of artists, cultural workers, consultants, non-local speakers and village youth organizations gathered by The Hidden South during the length of the project. Employing direct physical perception and inner sensibility to form its foundation and creating dialogues through telling stories mixed with mythologies of various origins, The Hidden South reveals a path of self-empowerment for the continuation of unending cultural revival.

(Commentator: HUANG Hai-Ming)

Artwork Introduction

The Hidden South is an art project that features four townships in Taitung County, which are Daren, Jinfeng, Dawu, Taimali. It aims to create dialogues with local communities by engaging local culture, memory of local residents, nature and the indigenous landscape. Through the collaboration between artists, local people and participants, the art project reveals immersion communicated between contemporary art, indigenous wisdom and natural philosophy'; unfolding experiments to evoke and represent local cultural subjectivity. The project team and participating artists visited and lived in the four townships, inviting participants to cast away existing frameworks and logic, remove dichotomous boundaries and create twenty brand new site-specific works incorporated with local perspectives. In addition, the project also includes more than fifty activities and events designed in accordance with the curatorial concept to awaken the physical senses. The project presents abundant activities and events in a wide range of genres, including an artist residency, wild talks, art workshops, historic lifestyle camp, guided tours, film screenings and food sharing. The indigenous concerts, hunting and tracking tours, shaman courses, dream interpretation gatherings, sharing of folk tales about the sea and moon have fully realized the project-based spirit of The Hidden South and reconnected nature, reality and imagination.

About the Artist

mt. project

One can only be refined by the mountains when thinking from the perspective of the nature and land. Mt. Project founded by curator Ihwa Eva Lin, upholds the core values of cultural sustainability and sharing, and seeks opportunities of integration and breakthrough within diverse forms of art and practice. Working closely with international and local artists, creators, thinkers, craftsmen, hunters, farmers and professionals from different fields, Mt. Project seeks the hidden wild spirit and knowledge forgotten from this rational world and realizes the social value of art and public action with the profound humanistic thinking in contemporary art. Its recent projects include Parallax: Damage Control in 2017 and The Hidden South in 2018.

Production Team

Art Director：Eva Lin

Exhibition Team：En-man Chang, Haoyi Chen, Shin-yih TSAI

Project Administrator：Lichi Chu, Peggy Lin, Juitzu, Chang, Sin-Zong Chem, Pei-jung Tsai, Shanlien Hsieh

Designer：Yenpochun Design

Graphic Designer of website and event：Yanghis Hsiao

Photograph：Chui-Yu Chiu, Neng-Chen Chang, Etan Chen

Organized by：Taitung County Government

Co-Organized by：Taitung County Cultural Affair Department

Implemented by：mt.project

Participant Artists

Esther STOCKER, Luxury LOGICO, Wen-Fu YU, Anne-Flore CABANIS, Chien-Wei BALI, Shing-Hsiung CHEN, Kaling DIWAY, Dexter FERNANDEZ, Yavaus GILING, Chiu-Chen HUNG, Po-Chih HUANG, Shih-Yang LEE, Cudjuy MALIJUGAU, Tjuljaviya PULJALIUYAN , Siki SUFIN, Rudee TANCHAROEN, Varig TINAWAY, Sih-Chin WU, Tsan-Cheng WU, Tzu-Ning WU