Artists' Afternoon Tea Starts with Food Culture - Taiwanese Fruits and Traditional Pastries
Artists' Afternoon Tea Starts with Food Culture - Traditional Italian Pizza
Artists' Afternoon Tea Starts with Food Culture - Japanese Sashimi and Okonomiyaki
Community Building at Tainan Luermen Tianhou Temple - Group Photo of International and Domestic Collaborative Mural Artists in Front of the Mural: Japanese Artists Yoichi Tada and Momoka Yamazaki, Italian Painter Ariano, Taiwanese Painter Fei Yu
Completion Exhibition of 'The Garden Under the Eaves' Upon Residency Conclusion
Mural on the Wall of Qiaotou Baishu Community by Taiwan New Mural Team
Mural on the Wall of Qiaotou Baishu Community by Taiwan New Mural Team - Work by Jun-Yang Lee
Taiwan New Mural Team Creating Scenes for New Taiwan Dollar
Taiwan New Mural Team Creating Scenes for New Taiwan Dollar
Taiwan New Mural Team Creating New Taiwan Dollar - Work 888 by Jun-Xian Li
Poster for the Taiwan New Mural Team's New Taiwan Dollar Creation Exhibition

As the year turns and all things renew, I have little impression of Christmas 2012, nor do I know how Chinese New Year 2013 passed. Fortunately, photographic records from various stages of life document my travels across Taiwan. Indeed, every step leaves a clear footprint; these actions construct a rich life. Amidst busyness, time rushes by, yet each moment is fulfilling and real. These personal experiences are unforgettable, marking individual growth.

My trip to Taiwan in the second half of the year began with a residency at Qiaotou Art Village in Kaohsiung. In just one month, it was fulfilling: I made many contacts and visits, participated in various village activities, attended three cross-national artists’ afternoon tea discussions, and engaged in community building at the White House in Tainan near the Luermen Tianhou Temple. The closing exhibition “Garden Under the Eaves” offered profound insights. It seems art has become marginalized, with artists merely playing around. I also attended the opening of “Golden Light Rolling Strong: Hairtail Fried Rice Noodles” at Kaohsiung’s Xinbin Pier, witnessing the painstaking efforts of Taiwanese artists. They seem trapped in their own sorrowful castles, finding it hard to awaken social cultural awareness. The White House in Qiaotou used every possible method to nurture the community and awaken awareness of folk life.

The Taiwanese New Mural Team’s painstaking efforts aim to break through the contemporary art dilemma of the southern lands and construct a South Island subjectivity. Visiting their murals in person, they whitewash community walls, intervening in space. Does space need art? Who knows? Their intent is clearly to shape the social environment, but “change” is not easy. Is it treating the root or the symptoms? Like Don Quixote, speaking in the tone of a South Island knight, saying “Well played”? Underneath this wishful thinking lies a utopian plot, where the meaning of action seems to outweigh the action itself. After the residency ended, I continued observing the Taiwanese New Mural Team’s actions and creations. In early December, another action occurred: painting “Taiwan New Dollars.” Gathering in a sugar factory warehouse, this time without covering houses, they practiced painting directly on wooden boards under the theme of New Dollar bills, then exhibited them in the warehouse. Did this action create art or create messages? Hiding in marginal areas to extend artistic justice is hard to imagine. Are they having fun? The right to imagine versus the imagination of power. Long live the Taiwanese New Mural Team, long live! Who cares, or does art care about whom?