TFAM on the Move—Summoning the Landscape

Time | 2023/10/28-2024/09/29 (Tuesday to Sunday 10:00-18:00  Closed on Mondays.)

venue | BEITOU PLUM GARDEN (No. 6, Zhongshan Rd., Beitou Dist., Taipei City 11203 , Taiwan (R.O.C.))

TFAM on the Move invites local residents to tell stories both big and small about each and every neighborhood of Taipei. Using artworks from the Museum collection as a vehicle for local memories, participants recollect and interactively create on-site, and under the theme of My Daily Taipei, explore life in specific districts while collectively seeking out and identifying with local cultural characteristics. This year, the program has focused on Beitou District and chose to extend programming from the area’s natural geothermal features, mystical character—which derives from the area’s original name Witches’ Village—and culture of tourism. Upon entering Beitou District, one immediately senses its unique historical atmosphere and inherent cultural memories.

For many people, their first impression of Beitou is its strong sulfur smell. Situated at the foot of the Datun Mountain Range, Beitou is dotted with steaming sulfur springs that shroud the area in mist and conjure visions of a witch’s lair and the occult. This phenomenon is exactly what prompted Beitou’s indigenous residents, the Ketagalan people, to name the area Pataw, meaning “witch” in their language. In 2023, TFAM exhibited Gôbara Kotô’s (1887 – 1965) album of paintings Twelve Points of Interest in Taipei at Beitou’s Plum Garden, a museum housed in a former residence constructed in the 1930s. At the time of its creation, Gôbara’s series served as a guide to famous sights, and today offers us glimpses of their past appearance and atmosphere, which are in stark contrast to our city streets, culture, and lifestyle of today. The exhibition title Summoning the Spirits of Place relates not only to the evocative geothermal activity of Beitou, but also to the distant imagery of old Taipei that this district calls to mind, thus concentrating disparate times and contexts, as well as contemporary and historical cultures, symbologies, and lifestyles. The program invites artists and senior residents of the area to present artworks and tell their detailed stories of the district, in hopes of concretizing the memories of locals who witnessed the past first-hand.