The Tugou Rural Art Museum opened today (December 16)!
We are going to establish an art museum!
Using a rural village to establish an art museum!
This village is the art museum!
The art museum lives within this village's four seasons and the lives of its farmers!
Art sprouts when sweat drips down!
Art grows and spreads beneath the soil!
Art strolls along the paths at dusk!
Looking Forward to the Rural Art Museum
By Zeng Xuzheng
Tugou was the first to call out the concept of a "rural art museum," bringing confusion and curiosity to Taiwanese society,and this is hardly a bad thing.
The confusion is unavoidable, because art museums have always existed only in cities, and even artitself has existed only in cities. Where would rural areas get art, let alone an art museum? When you hear the explanation "this is notan ordinary standalone, enclosed art museum, but rather one that advocates that 'the entire countryside is an art museum,'where beautiful things everywhere are the museum's exhibits," at this point you might roughly agree,but you will immediately become curious: how do they plan to do it?
How is the Tugou Rural Art Museum to be done? This question is in fact also one of the museum's operationalcore concerns. The people in charge of preparations are asked and ask themselves every day, and even now that they are underway, they mustcontinue to ask and answer themselves. I believe that after the opening, as more people get drawn in, everyone will continue to ask:How is the rural art museum to be done? This has become one of the rural art museum's "permanent exhibitions."
As the famous French sculptor Rodin said in his much-quoted words: the world is not lacking in beautybut lacking eyes to discover it. Yes, once you can adjust your perspective and way of seeing, you will discover in the ruralareas many beautiful things. Flocks of egrets hurrying back to their nests at sunset glide across the sky leaving silhouettesbehind them, farmers toil busily in the fields dripping sweat, in the settlement a grandmother bustles in the kitchen preparing dishes for her familyand the fragrance drifts out, in the rainy season you watch the threadlike trails of rain dripping from the eaves, the abundant moisture at the foot of the wall nurturesthe green moss, at night the lively sound of firecrackers comes from afar setting off the silence...
Images beyond description,sounds, smells, foods, textures, and associations, the states these various realms set in motion are not just the five senses but the sixconsciousnesses. These works have no author and no copyright, awaiting your discovery before they become works, awaitingeveryone's discovery before Tugou becomes an art museum... (Originally published in China Daily News)
