Day Ten was a relaxed day traveling to Kaohsiung and visiting the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. The train ride was pretty short again, I recall it being little over 40 minutes. I was working on my journal and by the time I wanted to take a break and watch some tv we were already there!
We had lunch at a local department store; I think it was a Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, which is kind of like a Westfield in my opinion. I spotted some strawberry mochi that I snagged on the way out. It was a lot more complex inside: the outside is mochi covered in sprinkles, but the inside had a strawberry flavored fluff, beans, and some kind of cake thing.
Afterward, we made our way to the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts for about two and a half hours. Each floor had one or a few themed exhibitions, and it was interesting to compare the kinds of contemporary art you would see in this museum versus the ancient art displayed in the National Palace Museum. A few of us started on the top floor and worked our way down. Most of that floor was dedicated to a single artist, Chang Li-Yeh. He is a multimedia artist whose sculptures and paintings were colorfully fantastical. They contained many religious elements while also incorporating nature and dreamlike creatures into his work. One of my favorite was a circle piece made up of many panels, which I took a pano of. From afar you can see some Buddhist figures intermixed with mythological creatures of fortune such as golden dragons. Chang was also an illustrator for the newspaper, in which he used the same reality-bending imagery to convey more straightforward messages, such as anti-smoking cartoons and political commentary.
Some of the artworks we saw on this and the next floor were darker, such as a stop motion film depicting the subjugation of workers, but some were lighthearted and meaningful. Malli and I sat down to write our favorite foods on a recipe card at one of the exhibits, for instance. We found some of the artworks amusing, although they may have had a more profound meaning (take the video on the left, for instance). Many of the artworks that hit me were ones that conveyed pain through depictions of flesh, such as the image of the apple below. Another work had what looked like organs woven in yarn hanging from the ceiling, with loose yarn spilling across the floor like rivulets of blood. Another, depicted in the bottom right, was built like a graveyard of young women who had committed suicide. Each is depicted with a little doll in a glass house with their suicide note, surrounding a clear tent. The shadow on the floor shows the figure of a girl jumping off of a diving board. These works I mentioned were by women artists as part of an exhibition highlighting work that focuses on the “South”, whether geographically or metaphorically. What is life like for marginalized populations? How does their experience effect their wellbeing and those around them? I believe these works were aiming to focus on these different dimensions.
We saved the main exhibition for last, “Footprints of the Walker: Tsai Ming Lang”. This exhibition consisted of short films, charcoal drawings, paintings, mirrors, and a large banner painted with the words of the Diamond Sutra (also the title of one of the short films; see the central image below). The largest wing was set up to have the different films playing on all different surfaces at the same time. I felt the music most deeply, which often accompanied just one scene playing throughout the song. The song playing in the first video below is “一水隔天涯 爱你三百六十年 许冠杰” or “A River Separates Us, I love You for 360 Years – Xu Guanjie”, according to my Shazam app. The films were directed by Tsai Ming-liang, and the Walker was played by Lee Kang-sheng; in many of the films Lee takes careful, measured steps through different urban settings across the world. The goal of the exhibition is to liken Tsai’s journey as a filmmaker to the protracted pilgrimage of a monk in search of scriptures, but my greatest takeaway was the placement of the Walker within the hustle and bustle of city life. It made me think about how religion, especially ones as ancient as Buddhism and Daoism, have changed to continue to fit so seamlessly into modern society despite the exponential increase in social and technological change. The people around the Walker flowed around him to continue about their day, sometimes blocking the camera, but he continued at the same meditative pace. In the same way, temples may be moved as parcels of land are bought and sold by the government and the burning of spirit money/incense may have started to phase out, but those temples continued to exist and are maintained by their new communities and new practices allow for future generations to continue their worship.
I finished off the night with a nice boat ride on the Love River (or Ai River), which divides the city in two. The area has a similar vibe to Philadelphia in my opinion, but of course everybody can share in the theme of love. The boat took us on a loop to see many waterside attractions, such as two music halls (center), the Pier 2 Art Center (left), and a statue of a sea dragon releasing plumes of smoke. They were also making preparations for the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival, which starts tomorrow! I am SUPER stoked, I used to go to my hometown’s Dragon Boat Festival in Colorado every year up until I moved. I think it is a wonderful tradition despite the sad origin of the festival (more to be said later).
