The distribution of land resources in Hong Kong is extremely uneven. Most people living here are cramped in tiny space. They must fully utilise every inch of their living by all means. In Taiwan, we witnessed how creators of different characters make use of space to realise their ideal living. Near the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei is former editor Chen Yi-chiu’s rented old house. It has been refurbished into a collaborative platform called “Pon Ding” for art, books and pop-up events. The space transforms continuously with the flow of people, events and ideas. It has gradually been developed into a venue that supports emerging creatives’ debut exhibitions.

On another morning, we visited artist Liao Chien-chung’s studio-cum-home in Bali district on the opposite coast of Danshui. The outdoor area is his work space, which doubles as a furniture workshop, whereas the indoor area is his living area and the studio of his illustrator wife, Wang Chuen-tz. There are two lofts in the house. His son who is still in kindergarten has already got his own small study. One wall in the living room is, surprisingly enough, a climbing wall. More unexpected is the fact that, whether it’s the lofts, the climbing wall or the indoor furniture, they are all done by Liao Chien-chung. He said he wanted to preserve his artistic freedom. Therefore, he makes money by making furniture so as not to be constrained by the sales of his artworks. He can then freely create the works he wants. In the aspect of everyday living, he lives faithfully by the principle of DIY. Most people would use money to exchange what they want in daily life. Yet, as long as we can do it ourselves, we can save that amount of money, as well as the time spent on earning it.

This DIY mindset is not limited to skilled carpenter Liao Chien-chung. At different points of the trip, we encountered this zealous DIY spirit time and again. In Taoyuan, we visited artist Huang Po-chih’s childhood home. The long, deep old house was once the home of many of his family members. As they left for their own reasons one after one, the house was vacant at last. Recently, Huang Po-chih returned to the house. With the help of his energetic mother, he removed various odd objects accumulated for years. His renovation plan for the house was to use the first floor as his studio. As for the original large living room, he wanted to make it into a library. This is because he has been interested in art and design since childhood and there were no related cultural resources or activities nearby at all. Therefore, he gave birth to this idea, hoping to bring an accessible channel to the residents and children to get in touch with art.

Another example is Lifestyle Bookstore, which is also located near Taoyuan. This remote rural bookstore was formerly a karaoke owned by the landlord. Later, he leased the place to the current bookstore’s owner and his wife. At that time, the owner’s newly-wed wife moved to Longtan from Taichung. She realised there wasn’t any cultural venue nearby. She wanted to visit a bookstore but couldn’t find one. Thus, she got the idea of opening one. Incidentally, she came across this group of wooden houses that came with a large lawn in front. She was determined to actualise the ambition of opening Lifestyle Bookstore. All bookshelves in the bookstore were handmade by the owner himself, whereas the flowers on the lawn were planted by his father. Before the store’s opening, the old colleagues of the owner’s wife in Taichung came to help decorate the bookstore. With their own hands and the assistance of their friends, the couple have created their ideal art space. It has already been five years.

In these two examples, the artist’s and the bookstore owner’s intentions behind the transformation of their spaces are, on the one hand, personal. On the other hand, it was stemmed from the wish to fill the gap they observed in the community. In fact, this has something to do with their understanding of the community. From what they said, they did not consciously “contribute to” the community. The attitude of viewing taking initiatives as something ordinary is perhaps precisely the evidence of being truly part of the community. Therefore, when they realise anything missing from the community, they will take action and try to make up for it. It is only intuitive.

As this was set out to be an art trip, we certainly have visited various art institutions and exhibitions. We visited the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA), Taipei Contemporary Art Center (TCAC), Open Contemporary Art Center (OCAC), Yu-Hsiu Museum of Art, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung Cultural and Creative Industries Park, The Pier-2 Art Center in Kaohsiung, 182artspace, Fotoaura Institute of Photography and ASA Salon. We visited many exhibitions and saw works of various media, from drawings to new media. In addition, from the sharing of various space owners, we learned about the operational directions and methods of community-run art spaces. After such intensive visits, some participants discovered that they favoured physical artworks more than onscreen images or new media works. During the free time in Tainan, they proactively proposed to visit Chimei Museum. The replicas of classic artworks, violins, armours and weapons gave them a deep impression.

Conventional art exhibitions delineate physical spaces. Visitors usually have to enter from the threshold at the ticket office, or even go through the rituals of leaving personal belongings and being told not to take photos, before entering the exhibition hall to meet the artworks. It is an aesthetic experience separated from everyday life. However, this time we also encountered some practitioners who let creativity enter real life directly, such as immigrant from Hong Kong Hang Li. He thought, “the underprivileged are not underprivileged people. They have different sides and talents. The obstacle is actually the environment, not the people.” He co-founded Sandwishes Studio to promote social welfare and creativity. They constantly collaborate with charities and design a number of creative projects for the underprivileged, e.g. improving the living environment of nursing homes with the residents’ creative works, letting healthy people experience the constraints the disabled face in daily life through games, and constructing a cute and fun playground that caters for the needs of the disabled.

Apart from art, we spent a night in Taichung to have a leftover dinner at 7C Kitchen. Before visiting, everyone joked that we were going to eat food waste. But that night, we didn’t know what else to say other than “It's delicious!”. 7C Kitchen is actually the first community-run leftover-sharing experimental space in Taiwan. They utilise leftovers in the hope of solving the issue of food waste. Food-sharing is operated on a free price system so that people who can’t afford meals can still fill their stomachs.

In addition to the practitioners who hope to intervene real life with creativity, we also saw some artists who have adjusted the reality they are living in their creative processes. For instance, to rebuild Ye Shi-qiang’s former residence, Yeh Wei-li and his whole family have moved to its vicinity. Huang Po-chih, on the other hand, has returned to the countryside to farm. In the past, Huang Po-chih hated the agriculture and clothing industries, just like many youngsters born in rural areas. Not until his mother, a former garment worker, lost her job did he get back in touch with these two underrated industries and turned them into creative resources. His “Five Hundred Lemon Trees” project invited 500 people to sponsor so that he could return to his hometown to work with his mother to revitalise the abandoned farmland and plant lemon trees. In return, the sponsors would receive fermented lemon wine. This art project reconnects him with his family, hometown, while opening up new plans to reorganise his childhood home and build a library. He admitted that he focused mainly on art in the past. He hopes to spend more time on planting and breath new life into the previously barren lemon garden. Here, we could see that the so-called self-expression is only one aspect of art. Years of art training and practice actually enables us to keep our hearts soft. We are able to open ourselves when the opportunity comes. We are able to be fearless to confront changes and get in touch with our deepest hopes.

“Craftsmanship” is the theme of this cycle’s Asia Seed project. Therefore, one of the key programmes of this Taiwan trip is to learn about an art festival in 2017, “Kau-Puê, Mutual Companionship in Near Future: Folk Art Parade ✕ Design Exhibition”. Thus, we met a number of participating artists, including Zhang Xu-zhan, Hsu Chia-Wei, Li Jun-yang, and Chen Po-i. Among them, Chen Po-i patiently explained to us the insider details of the exhibition. The Taiwanese (hokkien) term “Kau-Puê”, meaning “to build friendships” and “to accompany”, sounds very unfamiliar to us. Traditionally, it refers to the alliance in the worshipping activities of temples, where people build friendships and invite sponsorships. Borrowing the meaning, this large-scale exhibition of last year attempted to open up some channels to allow the “cross-infection” between contemporary art and folk art. It later triggered a new wave of discussions about folk/temple crafts in Taiwan’s art circle.

Our first stop in Taipei was to visit the traditional paper sculpture craft shop “Hsin Hsin Paper Sculpture Store” run by Zhang Xu-zhan’s family for generations. Participants were fascinated by the main ghost and god characters in Taiwanese folk beliefs. Father Zhang has been making paper sculptures for decades so he knows these myths and legends through and through. He told us in detail the stories about Taishang Laojun, Xuantian Emperor, Zhang Tianshi and Guan Gong, among others. He also shared with us the competition brought by mass-printed paper products. Later, we arrived at Tainan, a relatively old city with more old shops. We saw several kinds of traditional folk crafts. We visited traditional pastry chefs and Taiwanese three-dimensional embroidery “Tainan Kuang-Thai embroidery shop”. We also witnesses how father and son Chen Yu-feng and Chen Shou-yi integrate Western realism into temple paintings, as well as how Chin Men Theater continues to use traditional hand-painted movie billboards.

In Taichung, we visited artist Li Jiun-yang, who happened to have worked as a painter for movie billboards. He is the living example of the seamless convergence of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary art practice. Li’s studio-cum-home is full of all kinds of furniture, toys, artworks and musical instruments, among a portrait of Zunbao and Zixia from Journey to the West that reveals his original profession as a movie billboard painter. The outdoor area stores a large pile of wood for creation. His range of interests is broad. Though he first started as a movie billboard painter, he later taught himself wood carving, ink painting and calligraphy. He knows how to make hand puppets too. The musical instruments he can play include the violin, cello, guqin and erhu. His painting style defies definition. Classic characters, mythical animals, his friends and Ultraman all appear in the same painting. Seemingly nonsensical, it is in fact a combination of his all-round skills and creativity accumulated over the years. It is free-flowing and unconstrained.

During our chats, Li Jiun-yang said not going to work is better for life. If people don’t work, there won’t be a lot of worries or hinderance and only then can er remove the constraints imposed by society and enable ourselves to do what we originally wanted to do. This also echoes Wong Tin-yan’s sharing at a dinner about choosing academic subjects. He doesn’t think the choice must be career-oriented. Apart from studying well and finding a good job, there are still many more choices out there. Staying in Taiwan for just ten days, we hurriedly went through so many artworks, spaces, institutions and people. I discovered the most precious part of art may be: our constant scepticism about the existing frames and boundaries and our unwillingness to be not confined by habits; to practise opening our eyes and be perspective (as demonstrated by Teacher Kurt Chan Yuk-keung’s curiosity and enthusiasm for everything around him in the trip); and to open up more imagination and possibilities so that we get to know more ways to face the world. If we can grasp what art has taught, even if it is just one step at a time, it will probably open up the path towards freedom one day.