The Experience of Becoming a Curator-Visitor at MoNTUE
It’s not far-fetched to say that if one pays enough attention, one might even catch the exchange in whispers between the different exhibits on display."
Last winter, I made a visit to the Museum of National Taiwan University of Education (MoNTUE) for the exhibition The Everlasting Bloom: Rediscovering Taiwanese Modern Art. It was my very first time visiting the museum, and I enjoyed my time to the exhibition so much that I was prompted to recount this wonderful experience in a tale published after my visit.
This time around, as soon as the lockdown was lifted, I was excited to return once again to the MoNTUE for a special exhibition titled On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Brief Moment in Time. This exhibition also marks the first of the museum’s ‘DIALOGUES’ series, an initiative that encourages the curatorial team to open up dialogues with artists across different generations, proposing new interpretation of their works of art.
Some of you reading this now might have noticed that the exhibition title coincides with Guy Debord’s film produced in 1959 — On the Passage of a Few People through a Rather Brief Moment in Time — a short documentary that combines footage of the filmmaker’s friends with scenes from mass media. In the same vein, curators of this exhibition aims to make a “proposition for transhistorical approaches to exhibition making, colliding artworks from cross the 20th century into a single space and unifying them under a broad umbrella of family and social relations”.
Contrary to the traditional view of a museum’s role in dictating art history through exhibition, MoNTUE believes that museums are “sites for social gatherings, public platforms for cultural debate, and places where audiences gather to collaborate in the unpremeditated writing of art history”. That being said, visitors like you and me are no longer considered as passive recipients but active participants in the writing, or even, the rewriting of art history.
Entrance to ‘On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Brief Moment’
It is in this context that a collaboration took place, allowing artist LIN Ming-Hong to take on the role of one of the exhibition’s co-curators, alongside Guo Jau-Lan and Lee Ambrozy. And interestingly enough, in this exhibition, LIN Ming-Hong’s artistic work also forms part of this cross-century dialogue with two other artists: YEN Shiu-Long and LIN Show-Yu.
For readers who are not familiar with Taiwanese artists, YEN Shiu-Long (1903–1997) was a painter and sculptor born during the time when Taiwan was under Japanese rule; LIN Show-Yu (1933–2011), aka. Richard Lin, is known for his fascination of white minimalism; and LIN Ming-Hong (1964-), aka. Michael Lin, is known for creating visually attractive canvases inspired by traditional floral patterns in Taiwan.
Before this exhibition, it may be somewhat difficult to recognise the connection, if any, between these three highly distinctive individuals — each with a defined artistic expression — coming from three different generations. But as soon as one makes a visit to the MoNTUE, it won’t be long before one starts to wonder the reason why no one has ever thought of presenting their works together until now.
Right: Several Decades Like One Day (2009) by LIN Show-Yu
The unique curatorial approach to On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Brief Moment in Time is evident from the museum’s doorstep. Before one even steps into the museum, visitors would already be greeted by the exhibition’s introduction labels choreographed on the exterior of the building. Rather than presenting them inside the exhibition like what most museums would have done, these labels have been made visible to the public, as if the MoNTUE is inviting everyone — despite their differences — with open arms to come and join this ‘dialogue’.
Upon entering the exhibition, the first thing that immediately draws one’s attention is a giant wooden framework placed diagonally across the room, dissecting the rectangular space into two. This industrial-looking partition designed by LIN Ming-Hong simulates a display wall, and seems to stand upright with a sense of dignity and pride. On this wood-constructed panel a showcase of a number of canvases by artist LIN Show-Yu titled Several Decades Like One Day (2009).
By intervening in the methodology of exhibiting, co-curator and artist LIN Ming-Hong has succeeded in transforming a flat work of art into three-dimensional, encouraging visitors to examine the back of the canvases, too. To a certain extent, the display wall also seems to fuse naturally with the artist’s work, becoming an extension of the art. Taking into consideration of the fact that LIN Show-Yu was both a family relative and an early mentor of Lin Ming-Hong’s artistic career further accentuates that relationship between the ‘exhibit wall’ and the exhibit.
Besides this exhibit wall, the artist-curator also designed a pedestal on which two of YEN Shiu-Long’s chairs are displayed — like the rest of YEN’s furnitures found throughout the exhibition — elevating the status of what was originally an object of daily life to that of an art piece. When showcased on a raised platform, it’s as if the utilitarian nature of these quotidian objects have been stripped away, leaving only its design and craftsmanship under scrutiny.
YEN Shiu-Long’s bamboo furnitures
Moving on to the second floor, visitor is greeted by the Woven Bamboo Table (1954) designed by YEN. Set against a backdrop of the artist’s painting that depicts a flower vase placed on a table made in similar fashion, it’s no accident that this dialogue between the works of the same artist has been created intentionally.
Other furnitures designed by YEN, including chairs, cupboards and tables, can be found throughout the exhibition space. The writer seized this rare opportunity to examine YEN’s work up close, fascinated by how strips of bamboos could be manipulated in ways as such that, when assembled, becomes pieces of elegant looking furnitures. Though marks and traces of usage can be found on some of them, they nonetheless evoke a sense of timelessness.
In Taiwan, YEN is perhaps best known for putting together his research on the island’s traditional crafts, as well as his dedication in promoting local craft and incubating young talents. Similar to the contribution of Yanagi Soetsu to the world of craft in Japan, YEN’s contribution to Taiwan’s traditional craft earned himself the name “Father of Modern Craftsmanship”.
Right: Shaping (2011) by LIN Show-Yu
Left: Bamboo Living Room Furniture (Chair), 1991, YEN Shiu-Long
In contrast to YEN’s more traditional handmade furnitures is an installation titled Shaping by LIN Show-Yu. LIN’s lesser-known assemblage in red — representative of the coldness and stiffness of the machine age — was created by stacking up mass-produced readymades sourced from IKEA. Standing from a viewpoint where a juxtaposition of LIN’s Shaping and YEN’s Bamboo Living Room Furniture (Chair) in the near distance is established, any visitor would immediately feel that sense of empowerment and autonomy of curating his or her own exhibition, challenging him or herself into thinking the contrasting value of handmade versus machine-made objects.
What’s interesting is that, after the exhibition, this very installation by LIN will be disassembled and returned, reinstating the state of commodity out of which this artwork was created. This pushes the audience into exploring the relationship between art and commodity. The ephemerality of this work of art also seems to challenge the concept of eternity pursued by many artists since antiquity. Is art meant to survive? In what lies the true value of art?
Looking down on LIN Ming-Hong’s Booth (2019/2021) from above
It is important to note that the wood construction with seemingly unattainable heights have also been installed on the second floor, forming a jigsaw-like design when viewed from above. These giant wooden frameworks, together with the oversized floral prints, form LIN Ming-Hong’s Booth. One might be surprised to discover that these floral prints have, in fact, been painted meticulously by hands when observed up close.
In this maze garden full of vibrant blooms, visitors are encouraged to wander around freely and create their own designated path, travelling through the different portals that take them from one space to another. The construction of Booth also blends in perfectly with MoNTUE’s building, giving some the illusion that the museum it self is only part of a larger exhibition space that could be as vast as the universe.
Looking through the construction of LIN Ming-Hong’s Booth (2019/2021)
It goes without saying that the fluidity of visitor’s journey adds another dimension to this whole adventure as one is not only encouraged to explore what’s being presented in front of them, but also on the back. In the eyes of discerning visitors, surprising viewing experience can be created with unexpected juxtaposition of the exhibits, establishing new dialogues between seemingly unrelated works.
It’s not far-fetched to say that if one pays enough attention, one might even catch the exchange in whispers between the different exhibits on display. The writer caught one such exchange made between LIN Show-Yu’s 114 (1968–1974) and YEN’s Bamboo Cupboard (1997). Among LIN’s fascination with white minimalism illustrated by dominating horizontal composition, one notices a reflection of YEN’s furniture, combined to form an otherworldly existence of another dimension.
Reflection of Yen Shiu-Long’s Furniture on Richard Lin’s work
Instead of choosing to focus on either of the work on display, this writer encourage visitors to be playful and experimental with their ways of seeing. It is only when you use your own perspective can you curate your own explorative montage; and when that time comes, you not only become your own curator of this exhibition, but possibly others, too.
For visitors who are curious, a showcase of these three artists’ creative process can be found on the museum’s third floor. A creative process shows the progression and evolution of an idea from start to finish. This writer always used to think that the creative process is just a representation of that thought process behind an artist’s works of art, without knowing the possibility that the imagining of these processes can be a potential way of ‘reading’ an artwork, as the exhibition guide has suggested.
Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter (1966) by LIN Show-Yu
Besides the variety of processes being presented on the third floor, including sketches, prototyping and photography, the writer is drawn towards a set of canvases by LIN Show-Yu that illustrate the four seasons, namely Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. In this series, the artist ingeniously distilled the sensation of different seasons into pure abstraction, translating temporality into physicality. With the use of extremely subtle gradation in colour and texture, the writer was able to make out which canvas corresponds to which of the four seasons without even looking at the labels.
To conclude, the exhibition On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Brief Moment in Time is unique in every way, and the visitor experience had proved to be richer and more memorable than many of the exhibition that the writer had been to in the past. Though its scale is smaller than what I had expected, that doesn’t seem to pose a problem to the overall experience since, after all, quality is more important than quality.
On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Brief Moment in Time runs through September 5th, 2021. To learn more about the exhibition, please visit the exhibition website here.