Jut Art Museum

Period: 2024/8/31 - 2025/1/12

The official lifting of martial law in Taiwan on 15 July 1987 marked a major milestone in Taiwan’s democratization, and a period of great societal change ensued. Nevertheless, the change wasn’t made overnight. Striving to shake off their shackles and formulate their arguments, the fields of philosophy, literature, music, film, and art had been challenging the social norms as early as the 1970s, whilst the great achievement of architecture must be accomplished with concerted efforts of the multitude. Encompassing diverse expertise, architectural culture is indissolubly linked to the politico-economic milieu of a society. In this sense, of what significance is the “lifting of martial law,” as a historic turning point in the societal change, to the development of architecture in Taiwan? Besides, what crucial changes in Taiwan’s architecture have proliferated in the post-martial law era?

The Jut Art Museum has long been considering and exploring issues about urban architecture. This exhibition invites Shu-Chang Kung as the research and curatorial team lead. Comprising Tseng-Yung Wang, Kwang-Tyng Wu, Wen-Liang Kuo, Wei-Hsiung Chan, Ray Chu, Chun-Hsiung Wang, and Nancy Lin, the research and curatorial team works with Jut Art Museum in organizing the exhibition, seeking to collate the changes and landmark events in the three-decade development of Taiwan’s architecture from 1980 to 2010, so as to grasp how Taiwan’s architecture has evolved to date. This exhibition uses “the generation of emancipatory architecture” to describe the generation of architects born in Taiwan in the years around 1963 and completed their academic training in architecture around the lifting of martial law in 1987. Focusing on the unorthodox styles of “discontinuities” that find expression in the works or actions of these architects, the exhibition not only gives a vivid portrayal of this generation from the aspects of display, media, and design, but also probes into the new values embodied in this generation and the resultant emancipatory power that has substantially transformed Taiwan’s architecture.

Was such collective emancipatory power inevitable, or was it accidental? Did the drastic societal change afford this generation of architects the opportunity to brave the changing world and strive for freedom and liberation that unleashed waves of emancipatory power? Or, did these architects open up new horizons of their own free will? The central proposition of this exhibition is neither a political inquiry nor a monument to any specific object.

Rather, it is an attempt to outline an initial context by retrospectively collating the relationships between individuals and the changing world, based on which we can understand the fertile and diversified development of architecture in Taiwan.

Period: 2024/8/31 - 2025/8/31

The “Off-Site Project” as a long-term artistic practice, is launched and run by Jut Art Museum. This project invites artists to create on atypical exhibition sites instead of in established venues of museums, whereby they can liberate themselves from spatial and institutional limitations, and meanwhile define the term “off” through their unique practices.

For the 2024 Off-Site Project “When Freedom Blooms into Dance” Jut Art Museum collaborates with artist Ling-Li Tseng and the design studio Serendipity Studio. Set within the bright, high-ceilinged hall of a corporate building characterized by its linear and logical design, this project prompts a re-evaluation of the intersections between “space and freedom,” “public and private areas,” and “control and open exploration.”

By disrupting existing spatial designs and functional sections, Tseng and Serendipity Studio infuse the space with a fluid, sensory language, pushing the boundaries of spatial constraints and challenging the extremes of free movement within a limited environment.

When Freedom Blooms into Dance reimagines and duplicates the images of railings –typically employed to demarcate and control public and private areas – enlarging and flipping them to break through their given function within a limited spatial framework. By transforming these graphic, two-dimensional metallic lines into dynamic, three-dimensional sculptures, the project invigorates and redefines their original purpose while challenging the existing, fixed atmosphere of a space. This work invites a reflection on the delicate balance between limitation and freedom within architectural spaces, encouraging viewers to reconsider the interplay between restriction and liberation.