As the commemorative exhibition marking the 20th anniversary of Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Plates Would Know: A Mnemonic History of Nature and Humanity focuses on the distinctive capacities of printmaking to “record” and “remember” within the histories of nature and humanity. It explores the profound relationships between artistic practice and the preservation of records, the construction of archives, and the creation of memory—relationships that unfold through traces, reproduction, and representation.
The exhibition is organized around two thematic sections, “Museum of Natural History” and “Museum of Human History,” presenting the multifaceted dimensions of printmaking across the fields of art, science, and the humanities. As the museum’s 20th-anniversary exhibition, Plates Would Know not only revisits the historical significance of printmaking, but also reflects on its role in a contemporary society saturated with circulating images. By virtue of its distinctive materiality, printmaking can function as a “mnemonic mode” situated between recording and creation. From the perspective of the “print,” the exhibition thus opens up an imaginative space for the creation of future memories, responding to art’s fundamental impulse to tell and make sense of the world.