To begin this article and as the lead curator of this exhibition, I feel obligated to share how we first decided to organize this exhibition. During the past five years since I started to serve as Director at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (KMFA) in 2016, I have been contemplating about how an art museum can lead paradigm shifts. One critical aspect is to build on the massive creative energy of southern artists that the KMFA has accumulated over time and transform it into a narrative element that enriches the modern and contemporary art history discourse not only in Taiwan but even globally. What crystalized from this concept was the South Plus: Constructing Historical Pluralism from the KMFA Collection, the permanent collection gallery that we created following our third-floor renovation in 2019. Over the years, we have attempted to integrate different areas of “the South” and proposed the concept of South Plus, a new coordinate system based on larger scales. This allows us to break free from the museum’s formerly geographical dimension of “southern” and focus more on the political, economic and cultural predicaments long facing the southern city of Kaohsiung. This is how we fit the KMFA within the post-colonial cultural context of the “Global South”.
While following the KMFA’s former context of the “regional south” or “geographic south”, I also combed through the indigenous collections that my predecessors built, especially with regards to the Contemporary Austronesian Art Project initiated by former Director Lee Jiun-Shyan in 2005.[1] Through deliberately building collections, inviting resident artists and curating related exhibitions, KMFA has not only cultivated Taiwan's contemporary indigenous artists but also, through the forms of art, brought together artists or researchers with Austronesian ties or identities. Over time, the KMFA has accumulated abundant research and discourses on this topic.
Thus, this inaugural Pan-Austro-Nesian Arts Festival aims to create a more inclusive context and fluid imagination, using concepts such as pluralism, oceanic culture, and boundary-free to break loose from the previous Austronesia and indigenous frameworks under the Contemporary Austronesian Art Project that were rigidly based on languages and blood ties. In this way, we can formally include indigenous cultures as an element in building the KMFA’s South Plus vision. On one hand, we aim to respond to the artistic creativity of Taiwan’s contemporary indigenous artists. We also hope to proactively identify the relevancy between indigenous cultures and contemporary societal development. In constructing the new coordinate system of “South Plus,” introducing dialogue among different cultures to stimulate each other, we want to expand the imaginations and discourses on Taiwan’s cultural sovereignty while also expanding channels for Taiwan to engage in dialogue with the world based on our Austronesia ties.
On the other hand, as the director of a city art museum, I often think about how we can further enrich the minds of the residents in the city with the keen intuition of artists. In response to Taiwan's rising oceanic awareness and to the “outward-exploring” city image of the southern harbor city of Kaohsiung, this exhibition formulates a visual ground for conscious dialogues. We named this exhibition an “art festival”, which also implies that one day when we garner sufficient energy, we want to be able to regularly hold the Pan-Austro-Nesian Arts Festival.
I therefore proposed the concept of “Pan-Austro-Nesian”, hoping to take a stride further from our current foundation and to invite artists from around the same ocean to freely express their views and imaginations. We expect the Pan-Austro-Nesian Arts Festival to gradually become a new cultural platform that highlights the various internal and external excursions across ocean currents, and that underlines the rich diversity that cannot be easily categorized.
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At this moment as we organize the Pan-Austro-Nesian Arts Festival, the world is being devastated by COVID-19. I cannot help but ponder on the alarming message that the pandemic is sending us. Since 2020, we started this “post-pandemic” life, where people are locked down in their homes and global travel has come to a halt. This has undoubtedly cast a serious question mark on the progressive value of modernism. We came to realize that the progressiveness and modernity that we have been so proud of cannot really bring stability. On the contrary, the conflicts between people or human's exploitation of nature have only become more acute.
In discussing the problems caused by modernization, we tend to distinguish between perpetrators and victims, or exploiters or the oppressed. Yet “modernization” itself is a megatrend, a giant whirlpool that sucks everyone in. In fact, for every single person living in the contemporary environment, we are all somehow involved, only to different degrees- in face of Nature losing its capacity, all of us are both the perpetrator and the victim. In this inaugural Pan-Austro-Nesian Arts Festival, we have no intention of proposing theoretical or philosophical solutions to problems associated with modernization. On the contrary, what we are thinking about is that if we do not think of people as the focus of infection, but instead look at ourselves as a form of life, maybe, through artists' creation, we can better handle our historical burden-- rely on art for communication, and even for thinking about the possibility of transformation.
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The ocean itself has no boundaries. Ocean currents are one of the most spectacular natural phenomena on earth.
In the Pan-Austro-Nesian Arts Festival, we design the exhibition area as an organic whole. The audience members resemble little boats sailing on the ocean, while the artists' works are like islands emerging in the sea. Each island has its own past and story, yet the islands are also interconnected. The exhibition is divided into three themes: “From Known to Unknown”, “Dark Islands”, and “Circle of Life”.