2019 Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival
Sail from Austronesia: The Power of Containers
Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival welcomes its 10th anniversary this year! This year, "2019 Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival" connects the collections of "contemporary art of Austronesia", which has been successfully cultivated by Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts for more than 10 years, with the theme of "Trap", and constructs a space of dialogue and speculation between the forest and the urban jungle in the port and the city that is closely related to containers.
Most austronesian scholars acknowledge the importance of Taiwan's austronesian language, because the languages on this island are the most diverse, which infers that it has the longest history and is likely to be the origin of the austronesian people. Therefore, this time, the container displaying the content and characteristics of modern shipping is taken as a symbol to connect the great mobile energy of the austronesian people who set sail from Taiwan and spread the world since the neolithic age, putting forward a proposition with history and future for the essence and development of Kaohsiung.
The theme of "Trap" is to pull people back to their original needs and foraging. In a food-based economic life, people mostly rely on their own labor to obtain food. The group living together in the tribe can carry on the lifeblood of the group through functions of food-sharing and division of labor. In the process from the era of barter to the era of money, what kind of competitive or cooperative relationship do people use to survive?
The austronesian artists invited by the Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival include several representative artists from Taiwan's indigenous peoples and two foreign artists from New Zealand and New Caledonia. With the theme of "Trap", they shared the wisdom of the symbiosis with nature and the values of mutual respect among different ethnic groups. While focusing on global issues, they also use creative artistic techniques, combine design, fashion, visual and technology to carry out diverse dialogue across ethnic groups and fields. We invite you to visit Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts to experience the charming combination of container and austronesian arts!
