Department of Cultural Affairs

 

A Game between Borders: Main Visual
 
With funding for the Latin America Exchange and Cooperation Subsidy from the Ministry of Culture (MOC), Taipei Artist Village is going to roll out the “Latin America X Taiwan Street Art Exchange Program”. Continuing from “The Imaginary Land: Convergence Taiwan/Latin America”, held in collaboration with the Bamboo Curtain Studio in 2020, the current Program (2021) focuses on exchange of street art. The four works in the program are based at Treasure Hill Artist Village, each occupying one wall surface in the village. The public is welcome to visit Treasure Hill Artist Village from now until November 30 to search for more graffiti works on the walls in the public space.
The design concept behind “A Game between Borders” uses walls as metaphors for “borders”. Rather than a political or geographic boundary between countries, a border can be a natural barrier or a historically defined virtual boundary. By using the wall as a metaphor for the border, when artists occupy a specific area of the wall to make graffiti, it is like a repeated political game of redefining borders through the interchange of real and virtual messages.
 
Four artists took part in the program. Candy Bird fictionalized Taiwan’s first graffiti history, (Un) Eternal Reminiscence, on the wall as if publishing the work on a poster or in a zine to underline the ideological conflicts in society. After developing a style over several years, Ting-Tong Chang portrayed the story of “Crying of the Lake Ghost”, a Treasure Hill legend, in his mural Fu Chu’s Daughter, Gànggǎn Street, and Shibi Pond. Chilean artists Macarena Yanez and Alme took part in the program remotely. Macarena Yanez, whose work focuses on natural horticulture and collages, created a large variegated floral mural based on vegetation native to Latin America and Treasure Hill. Working in collaboration with Taiwanese people and students, she presented Small Urban Plaza, a piece interwoven with virtual and real plants through composite creation. Alme, who likes to construct murals on tall walls, chose to remotely re-present an earlier work Awaken between Us, that was made in San Diego. The eye in the piece symbolizes connections among people and among countries.
     
A Game between Borders: Latin America X Taiwan Street Art Exchange Program will run for 3½ months. In addition to the above four artists, there are works by other artists on the walls in the public space across the village, making Treasure Hill a great place to take photos. The walls of the squash court are covered with works donated by graffiti artists, so street art is everywhere inside and outside Treasure Hill.
▍A Game between Borders: Latin America X Taiwan Street Art Exchange Program
Date | Until November 30 (closed Mondays)
Place | Treasure Hill Artist Village (No. 2, Alley 14, Lane 230, Section 3, Dingzhou Road, Taipei City)
Artists | Alme, Candy Bird, Macarena Yanez, Ting-Tong Chang
Consultant | Lucía Hsiao-Chuan Chen, Nobuo Takamori (names in alphabetical order)
 

• Owing to Level 2 pandemic controls announced by the CECC, the maximum number of village visitors at any time is 300 persons.