Happy Paradise, an on-site installation based upon Taipei Fine Arts Museum’s (TFAM) urban location, is one in a series by Li-Hui Huang responding to the positions of the individual relative to the landscape.
The Yuanshan area that radiates outward from the TFAM has served as official political, military, cultural and educational arenas in over a century of Taiwan’s modern historical development. In addition to prehistoric civilizations evidenced by the Yuanshan Archaeological Site, the area was home to railway infrastructure built by Governor-Generals of Taiwan (now the Tamshui MRT Line) and the Taiwan Grand Shrine and Yuanshan Garden (present-day Grand Hotel) during the Japanese colonial period; followed by other institutions including the Taipei Headquarters Support Activity for the U.S. Military (now the Taipei Expo Park); Radio Taiwan International; and the now-relocated Taipei Zoo and Children’s Amusement Park.
Over time, these official arenas have been overlaid and rewritten by the powers that be, as have the interior spaces at the TFAM. Huang makes use of the large panoramic windows in the museum’s first floor lobby on which she mounts three historical images relevant to this space: Prince Hirohito’s procession alongthe Imperial Messenger Road; Eisenhower waving to the crowds;and the relocation of the zoo. Digits on the images indicate the distance in time between the events and TFAM in 2016. Unlabeled events are annotated on the lobby floor in a corresponding spatiotemporal map.
The audience is invited to leave their silhouettes on the mounted images accompanied by music playing on speakers from the song "Happy Paradise" written three decades ago for the zoo’s relocation. In the process of peeling off these silhouettes made with a layer of silicon paint from the window glass, existing insulating film on the window glass is simultaneously removed, creating a visual effect that suggests two metaphors: the ambiguous reappearance of history; and the floating forms of individual now absent. The pile of discarded human shapes echoes the stratified history of official arenas and midden heaps excavated from the Yuanshan Archaeological Site.
*Workshop dates:
2016 - 10th Sep., 17th Sep., 15th Oct., 22nd Oct., 19th Nov., 26th Nov., 3rd Dec., 17th Dec.,
2017 - 7th Jan., 21st Jan.
*Workshop duration：
12:00–16:30 (1.5 hrs for each participant audience, 30 positions in total.)
*Please book a slot for your online at https://goo.gl/forms/ZFEV6CTmCaI9JuLb