Dàng—Wu Mali

2023.03.11 - 2023.07.02 KMFA Galleries 104-105


 Back in 2020, the curatorial team and KMFA started the joint curation of this exhibition, Dàng—Wu Mali. After three years of in-depth research, the team attempts to represent through this exhibition Wu’s development as an artist who keeps up with the times and her unique aesthetic attitudes by not only delving into Wu’s development in multiple fields but also exploring the influence she has exerted in her times through her interventions with institutional mechanisms.
 Three focal points in this exhibition:

1. Diverse Fruits of the Avant-garde—Deconstruction of the Knowledge System:
Academically trained in and inspired by Western avant-garde art and thinking, Wu has not only introduced into Taiwan European and American art theories but also responded to the political and social changes in Taiwan. Her works are based on conceptual art and, along with the changes of epistemology, she has started to reflect upon the system of art through her approaches of artistic creation and gradually moved from artistic creation with artist as the center to artistic creation with the public as the center.

2. Super Mario—From Opposing and Criticizing to Coexisting and Merging with the Institution:
In the era of confronting and challenging the authority/patriarchy, Wu spent over 20 years engaging in feminist movements in Taiwan. She has brought “feminine thinking” to the masculine society in Taiwan and converted the inclusiveness, intersubjectiveness, cooperativeness, timeliness, and perceptiveness of such thinking into nutrients for art to intervene with society and gradually establish the “art as social interaction” in Taiwan.
 
3. Sustainable Homeland in Capitalist Ruins—Eco-environment Cooperation Network/Hyphal System:
For many years, Wu has been investigating issues about the environment or eco-systems in her works, raising questions about the “livable environment” for humanity. In the present, she is extending her focus to disruptions of ecosystems and social relationships caused by global capitalism and also exploring how to achieve prosperous coexistence among people of different ethnic/cultural backgrounds and even among different species through the new role of art.


It is noteworthy that this exhibition also includes many works of social participation art, such as Follow the Dream-Boat; Memorandum for the Next Round of Peace and Prosperity; To Reconstruct 1cm3 of Land, we need 100 years; Swing 2023; and What is Taste—Stories of Food and Migration. The development of Wu’s art with the public as its core is a realization of her “post-museum era” concept. Such “social engagement” also turns the exhibition and the whole presentation process into a “liquid art museum” envisioned by Wu and creates a hyphal-system-like social network.

In addition to inspiring viewers’ intellectual, spiritual, and mental susceptibility, the design of the whole exhibition venue is also intended to sharpen viewers’ physical awareness of smells, sounds, tastes, and touches. Moving around in the exhibition, viewers look at the surroundings from different viewpoints—looking at eye level, looking up, looking while sitting in an oscillating swing, looking while sitting down or standing up to write something, looking while walking up or down the stairs, and looking down from above…. As viewers change their viewpoints, the world they perceive also changes accordingly.



Curatorial Team: Huang Hai-Ming, Tsui Tsai-Shan, Tien Zong-Yuan