Discovering Beitou Through the Senses

Hong-Gah Museum Field Trip

The second field trip within the “Bodies in Beitou” program had professors I-Wen Chang and Hsi-Chuan Liu introduce IMCCI students to the Hong-Gah Museum and its current exhibition: “Beitou Local Flavors Collecting Project”.

The museum occupies the 11th floor of a commercial building in Daye Road and has windows to long extensions of green fields between Taipei and New Taipei City. The view inspires visitors to enjoy a momentary escape from the urban movement and noise of sidewalks and roads downstairs.

The “Beitou Local Flavors Collecting Project” exhibition is a multi-platform initiative that brought together students of different ages from institutions in Beitou as well as experienced artists – all under the supervision of curator Zoe Yeh.

Yeh introduced the exhibition as a multi-year effort in its third edition. Her goal was to develop a wider audience for the museum, starting with a partnership between the museum and educational institutions in Beitou.In an effort to include a more specialized audience after the 2017 exhibition, Yeh invited established artists for the collaboration and the result can be seen in the richness of forms, materials and conceptual developments throughout the gallery rooms.

photos by Clarissa Perrone Butelli

Chen Hsiang-Jung worked with ceramics and plastic to reference iconic elements of the Beitou Market, Yanzhi experimented with different forms and display of fermented food, Kao Ya-Ting produced four large-scale multicolored paintings inspired on beekeeping, Chen Jen-Pei brought stories of Shi-Pai senior students to life with bright food photographs and the duo Zo Lin and Yi Fen Yi collected leaves and weeds as well as images of fog, smoke and vapor around the neighborhood to produce an ethereal display of tea making, which infused the museum in a light perfume al the way from the entrance.

A documentary following Datun Elementary School students’ efforts in growing radish and their notebooks documenting the process displays a very practical complement to the exhibition, inspiring IMCCI students to explore ideas for the next year’s exhibition theme in not only conceptual fronts but practical projects as well.

At the end of the exhibition, a projection room with tables, colored pencils and activity leaflets invited visitors to contribute with their own “flavor stories”. A series of drawings produced by visitors of all ages decorated the walls while IMCCI students and professors discussed the main ideas of the exhibition and shared plans for the development of the “Bodies in Beitou” project. Curator Zoe Yeh also shared a few ideas, including her plan to collect gestures and mannerisms of cultural elements typical of Beitou, such the motorbike taxi drivers.

After the visit, students were free to walk and explore the Beitou area for themselves and start collecting their own narratives for the next steps of the project.

– Written by Clarissa Perrone Butelli

References:

Hong-Gah Museum (English content)
https://www.hong-gah.org.tw/?lang=en