19 minute read
Weaving the Relationship between Textile History and Audience
from A Reader TECHSTYLE Series 2.1: Fabpublic! -Talking about Textile, Community and Public Space
by mill6chat
Weaving the Relationship between Textile History and Audience − How This is Realised at Honggah Museum
Frankie Su
Fig. 1 Honggah Museum located in the Beitou area, Taipei / 2008
Honggah Museum was founded in 1999 in Beitou, Taipei by the Chew’s Culture Foundation. The Museum has always been seen as an art space for promoting contemporary art, and at the same time as the custodian of an abundant collection of embroidery art, collected by the founder based on his personal interests.
Andrew Chew began to build his collection after he visited Hangzhou and Hunan in the early 1970s. He developed close relationships with both cities (both recognised nationally by China Intangible Cultural Heritage for their embroidery), and their institutions. The Chew collection has become one of the main collectors of Chinese modern embroidery (Figs. 1-2).
Mr. Chew then devoted himself to preserving the precious embroidery artworks he had collected from China and promoted them by providing a professional showcase in the form of the Honggah Museum − and by ensuring that museum admission was free to members of the public for over twenty years. Exhibitions, campaigns, inter-disciplinary performances, and educational programmes have been developed. The museum provides for art appreciation in a venue of quality, as well as sowing the seeds of art, not only for the local community in Beitou, but also for audiences from all over Taiwan.
Mr. Chew was also dedicated promoting contemporary art, and the Honggah Museum also serves as a platform for the showcase of contemporary art via regular themed events such as the biennial “Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition” and solo exhibitions of emerging artists from Taiwan and abroad.
As the operations team of Honggah Museum, we have always faced the challenge of bringing in a larger audience. Having in-depth analysis based
on the fruitful collection of audience data from our programmes and exhibitions enables us to face this challenge. From my experience, it feels as if there are two different kinds of audiences who come to see the different content on display in the Museum. Each group visits for only that which interests them. Consequently, over the last few years of programming, it has been the priority to plan a series of projects that bridges our two main groups of audiences from very different backgrounds – who are coming to the museum with very different interests. We aim to mix these audiences by bringing them together in one room and hopefully create an interesting conversation.
With this aim of trying to bring together rather traditional, or craft-based works, and more contemporary art works for our diverse audiences, Honggah Museum has specifically organised projects/exhibitions over the last few years with this goal in mind. In order to share our experiences, some of these projects/ exhibitions are described below.
“Modern weavolution”
We re-examined the history of embroidery making – finding that this old art normally involved a huge amount of labour. Starting from this point, “Modern Weavolution” tried to bring the conditions of labour in the fabric and fashion industry to our audiences’ attention. Prior to the Age of Industrialisation, it was the women in families who mainly contributed to the production of fabrics. However, since the Industrial Revolution to the present day, fabrics are often made in developing countries and with underpaid labour.
The former represents invaluable household labour, whilst the latter is low-priced market exploitation. The exhibition, “Modern Weavolution”, combined traditional embroidery pieces with contemporary artworks, stimulating dialogues and reflections on the comparisons between the spirit of traditional techniques, and the phenomenon of capitalist society and cheap labour today.
The artwork The Embroidery of Embroidery depicts the process of embroidery and the collective labour involved. Along the way, references are made to cultural heritage, as well as the development, the innovation, and the pursuit of sublime craftsmanship. Nevertheless, labour today, within the capitalist system, has become mechanical and oblivious to the means of production. Cheapness is at its core, with morbid consumption and an exploitation of the work environment as the result. The artist Chang Shu-Man re-interprets the work The Embroidery of Embroidery with hand-painted stop motion animation, not only adding the fun of “motion”, but also honoring the spirit of traditional embroidery − stitch by stitch (Fig. 3).
Another theme is highlighted by Ho Chao-Ti’s Wandering Island − El Salvador Journal and Lo Hsin-Jie’s Funny Competition between Labour and Management: You Have Me in You. The two documentaries both examine the textile and clothing industry under the influence of globalisation, inside and outside of Taiwan. The artists show the awakening of labourers both locally, and abroad, and their fight for their rights via confrontation and negotiation (Fig. 4).
Embroidery of Tseng Hou-Hsi’s Night Banquet is a work created by an embroidery workshop at the request of Mr. Chew, founder and president of the Museum. This art piece employs “dense embroidery techniques”, with every inch of the piece woven with two, three, or even more,
Fig. 2 Museum collection room with embroidery art / 2008
Fig. 3 Animation and original piece of Procedure of Embroidery-Making / 2015
Fig. 4 Art works El Salvador Journal by Ho Chao-Ti (left) and Huai Mo Village − Tapestry by Hsu Chia-Wei (right) / 2015
Fig. 5 in Bloom − Unfamiliar Beauty of the Familiar Things in visual conversation with embroidery collection Xi Shi Huan Sha 2015 layers of silk embroidery. Previously Mr. Chew supported the workshop via commissioned production and procurement of its embroidery pieces. As a result, the workshop was not closed and traditional techniques could be passed on. Hsu Chia-Wei’s Huai Mo Village − Tapestry focuses on the Huai Mo Tzu Chiang House in Chiang Rai, Thailand, and the region’s complex history. Children of the Huai Mo Tzu Chiang House were invited to co-create pieces with the artist using donated sewing machines and based on old documents that had almost been forgotten. The two artworks appear utterly different and yet the concepts behind them are identical.
The exhibition presented not only visual dialogues between the collection of the Museum and the contemporary works, but also between other contemporary pieces, such as Jaffa Lam’s Enlightened from Green and Light and Studio in Bloom’s Unfamiliar Beauty of the Familiar Things (Fig. 5).
The textile industries of Taiwan and of Hong Kong formerly enjoyed a brief period of
glory as OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) manufacturing hubs, which has now disappeared. Jaffa Lam cooperated with the Hong Kong Women Workers’ Association on the “Micro Economy” project, exploring the process of art making using social resources. Hana Tsai, Chiu Chung-Yu, and Ama Shen, with their brand “in Bloom,” created a self-sufficient art production process as well as a full industry cycle.
Through the visual and conceptual dialogue between fabrics and labour, “Modern Weavolution” opened up a space for cultural intercourse between the old/ antiquity and the new/modernity. This dialogue aimed to unwind the meanings of fabric and extend it to the creators, labourers, and users that took part in the process.
Sewing image − an experiment with the Hong-Gah museum collection
“Sewing Image − An Experiment in Hong-Gah Museum Collection” was a conceptual appropriation of Honggah Museum’s embroidery artwork collection. It was an attempt to initiate a conversation between contemporary art and classical embroidery culture. In this exhibition, we wanted to discuss “embroidery” in terms of the transformation of the embroidery industry under the influence of capitalism, and how it is presented in modern society. The exhibition also explored the contemporary connection between image (video) and the production of image (embroidery).
The exhibition combed through the rich collection of Honggah Museum’s embroidery artworks and data, trying to clarify the process of transformation of “technique” in modern times, and probe into how it attained the level of “art”. This was done so as to define the cultural value of embroidery in contemporary society. Additionally, this exploration provided an entry point into the location and production of contemporary art. When consumption becomes the main activity in modern life, how could embroidery, as a decorative symbol representing culture from the past, relate to the modern images that we create in our everyday life?
Let us transform “embroidery” from a restrictive condition of a specific medium into an action of contemporary translation. The notion of “Image” does not have to be limited to just an “icon” in the context of embroidery, but can expand to that of pictures and moving images. The notion of “Platform” can be deemed to be the venue for culture preservation as well as of contemporary translation as reflected in art. In the notion of “Sewing Image”, the heterogeneity of contemporary images often presents different appearances and transformations in different media forms. Such creative production processes often bear multiple conceptual identities. These processes not only preserve puzzles to be solved and elements of meaning, but also the possibility of decoding meanings when considering and analyzing images via embedded critiques of capitalism. In the process of constructing image identity, such processes further reconstruct other dialectics – experience versus perception, action versus thought, society at large versus the individual – into activities on the same conceptual level.
Hou I-Ting often forms her ideas and formats of her artworks starting from considerations of space/ environment. With such a beginning point, she disassembles concepts like body, space, and image, so as to create metaphors of political and cultural imagination that lie behind the created images. This exhibition also presented previous works like Complexing Body (Fig. 6). These works derive from Hou’s practice and refer to her conceptual reflections on the interior processes of image production rather than an exploration of techniques of embroidery images. The photographic prints were overlaid with imagery created from heterogeneous media. These
Fig. 6 Exhibition view of Complex Body / Hou I-Ting / 2016
Fig. 7 Yi An Ci Yi − Fertile Green & Lean Red Hou I-Ting / 2016
Fig. 8 Installation view of Stitching Stories, Weaving Warmth − A Fabric Play Participatory Art Project 2016
interventions covered the existing visual reality of the images, gently portraying the politics of power relationships. Questions arise, such as, is this process intended to mark the title or authorship, or to warn of a modern daily life flooded with images? To answer these questions, we were able take advantage of a traditional embroidery work, which employed a dual variant embroidery technique, in Honggah Museum’s embroidery collection – Yi An Ci Yi − Fertile Green & Lean Red, and install it next to Hou I-Ting’s piece (Fig. 7). We could then engage in an experimental visual conversation and attempt to unlock the transitions of power within image production, as well as the forms of contemporary visual language that transcend the process-driven limitations of culture and time.
Stitching stories, weaving warmth − a fabric play participatory art project
Stitching Stories, Weaving Warm (Fig. 8) was a very different project from the other two examples given above. It was a community art project and exhibition that featured, and worked with, the group “Textile Playing Sisters”.
At the end of the 1990s, the Cloth Art Festival held in the Yong-Le market on Dihua Street in Taipei presented the stories of a group of female cloth lovers and a stockroom of fabric remnants. The Awakening Foundation arranged at least one course per week for local women to immerse themselves in the world of cloth. Cloth became the material for them to create artworks; cloth also formed a human tapestry - a longlasting sense of sisterhood (Fig. 9).
The sisterhood has journeyed a long way, sharing their love of working and playing with fabric ever since they first met and bonded in 1988. Through early assistance provided by the Awakening Foundation, they have collaborated with contemporary artists such as Wu Mali and others, and taken a further step from fabric play to creating artworks, showcasing their works in carnivals, as well as participating in exhibitions and, even becoming lecturers in community colleges. Playing with fabric has opened the door for these women to worlds far beyond the common resonance of their normal family lives, bringing these women together to create, and go further than before.
While playing with, and creating art works from, fabrics, these artists started to look back at the many stages of their lives – as daughters, wives, daughters-in-law, mothers, grandmothers etc., and realised that these different roles had fostered in them tenderness and tenaciousness. Telling, listening, and sharing each other’s stories, they empathetically connected with each other, thus establishing an intimate relationship of sisterhood. Creating artworks had not only brought enjoyment and satisfaction, but also the chance to express and voice thoughts and feelings.
Thursdays were the days the sisterhood most looked forward to – the days when they gathered and played together creating fabric art, and the process of creating this exhibition aimed to perpetuate this process. Through weekly gatherings, the artists met, reminisced, cheered each other on, discussed the themes and the exhibiting of their works from different earlier periods, and how the exhibition could portray the universal course of life experienced by all women. Moreover, serving as a collective platform, the exhibition intended to engage local audiences in multi-generational conversations
via outreach activities, such as “Sisterhood’s Room Services”, exploring the possibilities of what roles community art could play in community development .
Tobacco, carpet, lunch box, textile machinery and cave men: the narratives of craftsmanship and technologies in contemporary art
Our mission continues. We have just opened an exhibition at the museum called “Tobacco, Carpet, Lunch Box, Textile Machinery and Cave Men: the narratives of craftsmanship and technologies in contemporary art”. For this exhibition, we worked with guest curator Nobuo Takamori, who has long been interested in researching Hoggah Museum’s collection. Therefore, this experiment in how someone with a contemporary art background can work with the techniques of traditional craft/art, represents another approach towards our museum’s goal of bridging the gap between our diverse audiences. Artistry, aesthetics, the avant-garde, narrative, craftspersonship – those are some of the key concepts that seem to be difficult to intermix within the context of contemporary art. However, this is the very direction this exhibition attempts to experiment with.
The use of technology as a form of aesthetic narrative includes the command of unique, and yet uncontrollable, material. With perseverance and concentration, it is possible to bring notions of time and technology together. This creative process demands exceptional interpretative skill as well as aesthetic sensitivity. This exhibition endeavors to showcase how contemporary artists interpret and employ the processes of creative craftsperson methodologies with a particular focus on the processes of historical and contemporary technologies.
The most distinctive traits that separate craftsperson systems from contemporary art creation are those of concepts and narrative-orientation. Craftsperson systems retain the use of technology as a form of aesthetic narrative, while leaving conceptual room for object appreciation. How contemporary artists reinterpret this process, whilst employing the creative methodology of craftsperson systems, offers a distinctive conceptual angle to the final creations. This approach will be the direction this exhibition develops and experiments with. Sometimes, we picture craftspeople creating their work with highly sophisticated means. Yet, it is not the technology or techniques that matter here but how the artist finds creative balance between medium and technology.
This exhibition endeavors to break down the boundaries between craftspersonship and contemporary art. Nevertheless, the aim is not merely to mix two different types of works and present them altogether. It is also a search for the sense of craftspersonship within contemporary art makers. Through this search, the respect towards the use of their materials by art makers during the creative process will be discovered. Such devotion to materiality allows for the possibility of contemporary art making to return to the basis of craftspersonship –as an experiment with materiality and form. How artists create impacts directly on their use of radical materials in order to cleverly arrange their narratives. Artistry, aesthetics, the avant-garde, narrative, and craftspersonship, as mentioned above, are the key concepts that seem to be difficult to intermix within contemporary art practice – but are the very goals this exhibition strives to achieve.
To conclude, Honggah Museum has tried many different ways to engage diverse audiences. As has been described, this has included: commissioning a video artist to work with traditional embroidery pieces, group exhibitions showing selections from the museum’s embroidery collection juxtaposed with contemporary art, and a social engagement art project
Fig. 9 Gathering again 18 years later, meetings and workshops in the museum / 2016
relating to women and textiles.
Apart from whether or not we have successfully achieved a productive dialogue between the various strands of what we are trying to do, our main concern has been the feedback from the founder of the museum. Although passionate about embroidery, Mr. Chew is also a very openminded person when it comes to art. Often in the exhibitions that have a more conceptual focus featuring very difficult accompanying texts or statements, even though Mr. Chew admits that this is “not his favorite art”, we have not been stopped from displaying them. When he realised that the curatorial team of the museum intended to create different visual experiments by placing rather traditional embroidery pieces from the museum’s collection and contemporary artworks together, it did take him quite a while to digest the concept, and he discussed this approach at length with the team. Although he does not seem to be happy with every experimental exhibition we do in the museum, generally speaking, Mr. Chew has still been supportive of our future experimental programmes.
As to our diverse audiences, we carefully review all the feedback from every exhibition. Recently, we have started to have new faces coming in to visit the museum from both categories of visitors. Attempting to change the preconceived notions amongst audiences of both art, and non-art, backgrounds, of how certain forms of art should be discussed and presented, might not be the easiest thing to do. However, we find it crucial to challenge ourselves every time we propose an idea or concept, because the result can sometimes be both amazing and encouraging. In the near future, our aim is still to build up a healthier and more communicative environment for museum development. We have been constantly thinking about how to integrate visitors more, by organising programmes that could possibly involve their participation even further. At the same time, Honggah Museum will keep playing an important role as a museum for the community, starting from embroidery art, but also sharing it and linking it to contemporary art.
(This is not a translation of Chinese essay by the same author pp.125-131)
Frankie Su
Director, Hong Gah Museum, Taiwan
Frankie Su is based in Taipei, Taiwan. She received a MA degree with distinction from Department of History of Art, University of Essex. She worked as assistant curator in Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei between 2003 to 2006, then she moved to Beijing to join the initiative team of setting up Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art located in 798 Art District in Beijing. Su is now Director of HongGah Museum, a privately-funded contemporary art museum located in Taipei, and is one of the executive board members of Taipei Contemporary Art Centre.
She received a grant from Contemporary Art Foundation for a curatorial research trip in Europe in 2009 and a fellowship grant from The National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) to work with Independent Curators International to enhance the exchange and dialogue with Asian artists and curators.
織品、社區、當代藝術—鳳甲美術館的 藝術實踐
蘇珀琪
Fig. 1 鳳甲美術館座落於台北市北投區 / 2008
自 1999 年起鳳甲美術館在台北市北投區成立， 以展覽、推廣活動、跨領域展出等方式，為本地 社群提供專業的藝術欣賞環境。長久以來美術館 除了持續舉辦藝術課程或講座活動，積極推動社 區美學教育之外，更作為美術館展出當代藝術， 每年定期策劃專題展覽，如雙年展形式呈現的台 灣國際錄像藝術展、各種國內外藝術家個展。近 年來，也陸續與社區學校及社區團體合作，建立 夥伴關係，期盼透過藝術推廣計劃，強化與本地 社群的合作，連結社群的關係，關照社區議題， 開啟社區對話，實踐博物館與社區共享的藝術學 習（Figs. 1-2）。 目前館藏作品有近二千件，類別包含油畫、水彩、 素描、版畫、攝影、錄像、水墨和雕塑等。另外， 最為知名並較為稀有的藏品是約五百件中國近代 刺繡藝術，其中涵蓋了 1970、80 年代領盡風騷 的中國四大名繡作品，宛如一部百年中國刺繡活 史，無論是蘇繡的宮廷皇袍、湘繡的擬真雙面繡， 或是具有歷史價值的文革繡品，作品中不乏中國 工藝美術百花獎、國家級刺繡美術館收藏的珍 品。
Fig. 2 鳳甲美術館刺繡藏品庫房 / 2008 Fig. 3 《繡刺繡圖》原作及其衍伸之動畫作品 / 2015 Fig. 4 左：紀錄片《薩爾瓦多日記》（賀照緹）右：《回莫村》璧毯（許家維）/ 2015
Fig. 5 《尋常裝飾之不尋常之美》 及對話之刺繡作品《西施浣紗》 2015
織本主義
繡像檯—侯怡亭實驗典藏展
侯怡亭的創作往往從空間出發，作為發展意念和 形式的背景，以此解拆作品中身體、空間與影像 等媒介，來產生影像背後所隱喻的政治及文化想 像。本次展出其過往《複體》系列作品，這些作 品與其說是侯怡亭對於「刺繡」影像在技法上的 探索，倒不如說是她在影像生產過程中投射的創 作概念（Fig. 6）。那由各式媒介覆蓋攝影的外 衣，是為了掩蓋影像既成的現實，展示政治角度 下的權力角色？是為了標示作者，還是警示影像 氾濫的日常生活？關於這些提問，鳳甲美術館收 藏刺繡作品《易安詞意—綠肥紅瘦》，所使用 雙面全異繡的作品與之並排展出，進行實驗性 創作，試圖開啟影像資本中的權力轉換，以及 過程中所涉及當代語言跨越文化、時間的模式 （Fig. 7）。
共享的溫度—玩布姐妹的參與式藝術計劃
Fig. 6
《複體—維納斯的誕生》
侯怡亭 2011
Fig. 7
《易安詞意—綠肥紅瘦》
侯怡亭 2016
菸葉、地毯、便當、紡織機、穴居人：當代藝術中的 工藝及技術敘事
痛得好舒服
經過幾年來的嘗試，鳳甲美術館藉著邀請當代錄像藝 術家合作，重新詮釋刺繡藏品，或是策劃專題展覽， 將不同類型、不同呈現的藏品，以及邀請的藝術家創 作，放在同一個場地裡相互呼應，透過視覺進行直接 或間接的關連等，希望能在既有的框架中，刺激觀眾 探索新領域。這期間除了新的觀眾開始出現在非特定 類型的展覽，這種最直接的回饋與反應之外，美術館 的創辦人兼收藏家邱再興也從質疑的態度漸漸轉為理 解與支持。邱先生開始收藏刺繡是起於對刺繡作品的 個人喜好，但是對於美術館卻是保持著一個開放態度， 把美術館建成一個平台，以有限的時間及經費做最需 要推廣的計劃。因此，即使是美術館的團隊將較不平 易近人的當代藝術與刺繡作品結合起來，對他而言是 一種打破過往理解的挑戰，在積極的溝通之後，他表 達出「雖不是心中最喜愛，但必須支持」之意。
（本篇並不是同一作者英文的翻譯，117至124頁。）
Fig. 9 美術館裡跨世代的創作工作坊 / 2016
蘇珀琪 台灣鳳甲美術館館長
蘇珀琪在台北工作及生活。她以優等成績獲得英國 University of Essex 藝術史碩士學位。在2003 至2006 年間，她在台北當代藝術館擔任助理策展人，其後加入北 京798藝術特區的尤倫斯當代藝術中心。現在她是鳳甲美 術館館長，亦是台北當代藝術中心的執行董事。2009年當 代藝術基金會資助她到歐洲進行策展研究；國家文化藝術 基金會亦資助她到獨立策展人國際聯盟工作，以促進亞洲 藝術家及策展人與國際之間的對話和交流。
