Artists｜LIU Chin-tang, LAI Ho, NI Chiang-huai, CHEN Cheng-po, HUANG Tu-shui, KUO Po-chuan, LIAO Chi-chun, LI Mei-shu, WANG Bai-yuan, RAN In-ting, CHANG Wei-hsien, LIU Na-ou, CHEN Chih-chi, LIN Yu-shan, CHEN Chin, DENG Nang-guang, KUO Hsueh-hu, LI Shih-chiao, CHANG Wan-chuan, LIU Chi-hsiang, CHEN De-wang, HUNG Rui-lin, PU Tien-sheng, HUANG Ching-cheng, CHEN Ching-fen, CHU Ming-gang, CHANG Tsai, HUANG Jung-tsan, LIN Tuan-chiu, HUANG Yan, CHUANG Shih-ho (in birth order)
Contemporary Revisits｜HUANG Pang Chuan, LIN Chunni, Our Theatre

Supervisors｜Ministry of Culture, Kaohsiung City Government, and Bureau of Cultural Affairs, Kaohsiung City Government
Organizers｜Museum of National Taipei University of Education, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Fu Lu Culture Foundation
Co-organizers｜Beitou Museum, Chiang Wei-shui Cultural Foundation
Sponsor｜Museum Friends Association

Producer｜LIN Mun-lee
Chief of Research Team｜CHOU Wan-yao
Researchers｜LIU Liu Shu Chin, SHIH Wan-shun, CHIANG Po-shin, CHEN Huei-hsien, CHEN Yun-yuan, WU Chun-ying
Curatorial Team｜CHIANG Po-shin and the MoNTUE Team
Curatorial Team of the Extended Version of Exhibition at KMFA｜CHIANG Po-shin, Yulin Lee, and the KMFA Team
 

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In October of 1921, Huang Tu-shui was selected for Japan’s Teiten [Imperial Art Exhibition] with his work Water of Immortality. This work portrays a young, confident woman emerging from a clamshell, as though from darkness into the world. Her resolute yet reassuring stance symbolizes the imminent arrival of Taiwan’s cultural renaissance. On the 17th of that October, the Taiwan Cultural Association was established. In publishing his essay "Clinical Notes: A Patient Named Taiwan," charter member Chiang Wei-shui diagnosed Taiwan as suffering from “intellectual malnutrition,” for which the requisite treatment was a cultural movement, and the very organization to promote cultural movement was the Taiwan Cultural Association.
 
The ideological trend of national self-determination and civil rights movements during Taisho democracy after the First World War made an impact on the Taiwanese youth in Tokyo and inspired them to reflect on the experiences of discrimination in the colonies and to organize rallies. While Lin Hsien-tang spearheaded Petition Movement for the Establishment of a Taiwanese Parliament and hatched the Tai Oan Chheng Lian [Taiwan Youth] magazine with Tsai Hui-ru in Tokyo; Chiang Wei-shui and others formed the Taiwan Cultural Association on island. These were the momentous beginnings that paved the way for public intellectual enrichment, emancipation of minds, and artistic and cultural enlightenment.
 
A variety of political movements burgeoned as the cultural movement took root. The splintering of the Taiwan Cultural Association in 1927 gave rise to the formation of a number of organizations, each occupying their position on the spectrum and all working together toward Taiwan’s future. Meanwhile, influenced by global ideological trends, the cultural movement advocated by the Cultural Association germinated in new artistic concepts in paintings, sculptures, novels, plays and films of a new era. Artists persisted in seeking out the relationship between art and society, and the spirit of resistance through art and culture exemplified by the Cultural Association continued until after the Second World War.
 
In tribute to the centenary of the Taiwan Cultural Association in 2021, the Museum of National Taipei University of Education (MoNTUE) and the interdisciplinary research team look at the temporal-spatial background of a century ago through movements and developments in Taiwanese society. By juxtaposing artworks and historical documents that mutually complement, this exhibition portrays the society in which the Cultural Association and its relevant figures existed from the 1920s to the 1940s, reflects on the progressive actions and spirit of the Taiwan Cultural Association, while revisiting the enlightenment and self-awakening of Taiwanese culture as it unfolded a century ago.
 
The four exhibition sections of “Impulse of Life,” “The Creation of Landscape,” “The Public and the Modern,” and “Self-Awakening Modernity” serve as points of departure that guide the viewers to explore from the inside outward, and to contemplate ways in which these artists began from self-observation to burst forth and chronicle society through their works, depicting the integration and resistance between the individual and society. Meanwhile, the “Contemporary Revisits” segment has been developed in collaboration with contemporary art practitioners to uncover and perform the past. While showcasing the history of Taiwan through diverse approaches, this exhibition also attempts to incorporate contemporary artistic perspectives in its reaching back to the past.
 
The exhibition now tours to Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts after the show at MoNTUE. On the top of the original exhibition content, dozens of artworks and historical documents are newly included in this extended version of exhibition at KMFA through the keep-going curatorial research which has initially focused on exploring the relationships between artworks and the contexts of that era. In addition, to respond to the call of the exhibition to explore the enlightened countenance of Taiwanese Culture, KMFA highlights its “key collections” shown in the “South+ Special Collection Gallery.” Actually, the Special Collection Gallery which is established with the concepts of historical pluralism, “local globalization” and modernity also reflects the profound influence of Taiwan Cultural Association on the development of art in Taiwan.
 
Taking “Lumière” as its title, the exhibition “Lumière: The Enlightenment and Self-Awakening of Taiwanese Culture” responds to a group of intellectuals from a century ago, who kept courage in an era of darkness, who detected an almost imperceptible light and kept faith as they bounded ever-forward.