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The Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival has been held once every two years since 2001, and has become a distinctive Kaohsiung event. The 2011 Container Arts Festival has a theme of “Artbitat.” The artists have created visions of the home transcending time and space using very mundane cargo containers. |
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“The works will enable people to overcome their impression of the container as being cold, hard, bulky, vaguely threatening…”
2011 Kaosiung International Container Arts Festival: Artbitat
The Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival has been held once every two years since 2001, and has become a distinctive Kaohsiung event. The 2011 Container Arts Festival has a theme of “Artbitat.” The artists have created visions of the home transcending time and space using very mundane cargo containers. They scrutinize the background textures of our lives from new perspectives, and examine cities and the Earth with the outlook and love of persons concerned about their home. The 12 outstanding teams participating in this year’s festival are from Taiwan, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the United States. This year, artists from Kaohsiung’s sister cities of Honolulu, San Antonio, Tulsa, and Miami obtained sponsorship from the US Department of State. In addition, miniature model containers on the theme of “my perfect container” will be displayed at the festival, and a Facebook fan page will invite the people to participate in the “N Types of Encounters between Containers and Me” illustration and writing contribution activity. The Mobile Museum of Taiwan Literature, which consists of a modified container truck, will participate in the festival. We look forward to the Container Arts Festival helping bringing about an aesthetic revolution featuring everyday poetry and launching an unending human journey.
Goals and Curatorial Vision:
Every container work has borne witness to the role of maritime shipping, and its ups and downs, in Kaohsiung’s evolving civilization over the past decade. The artists have used their wonderful talents to transform each empty container into something unexpected, and created a marvel out of every rusty, bent waste container.
We welcome domestic and foreign artists to exercise their imagination on the interior or exterior of the container, using interactive installations, painting, or creative reconfigurations to create visions of the “home” transcending time and place.
This exhibition seeks to let viewers share the artists’ skills, humor, creative, and incredible ideas via the container’s characteristic of “mystery yet openness.” The works will enable people to overcome their impression of the container as being cold, hard, bulky, vaguely threatening, and instead find that they inspire the imagination about life. The Container Arts Festival will give Kaohsiung—the major port city in the island country of Taiwan—a chance to broadcast its limitless maritime appeal.
Exhibition venue: Pier 2 Art District, Kaohsiung
Exhibition Dates: December 10, 2011 to January 31, 2012
Supported by: Kaohsiung City Government
Organized by: Bureau of Cultural Affairs, Kaohsiung City Government
Curated and implemented by: Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts
Sponsored by: U.S. Department of State Contemporary Art Foundation
Coordinated by: American Institute in Taiwan, National Museum of Taiwan Literature, YM Museum of Marine Exploration, Department of Translation and Interpreting, Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages, Graduate Institute of Interdisciplinary Art, National Normal Kaohsiung University
***This article was published by NY Arts Magazine, 2011. Sponsored in part by Broadway Gallery, NYC.
