On the train, naturalists, businessmen, government staff, forestry workers, and artists are all heading west into the forested mountains. Whether they are exploring for research, economy, or creativity, people have brought settlement, livelihood, and destruction. The towering and fragrant Taiwan red false cypress and Taiwan yellow cedar have been gradually forced to share their habitat with Japanese cypress introduced by the Japanese during the occupation period. All the trees followed the steam as it moved into the city to become the Shinto shrines, toriis, houses, utility poles, and various furnitures ubiquitous in people's lives.
From the first to third floor of the Chiayi Art Museum, A Rhythm of Tree Forming the Forest begins with works inspired by the natural scenery of the mountain forests. The audiences are taken into the woods to see the relationship between people, the forests, and the mountains gradually unfold on the second floor before finally being taken to witness the rise of an industry and its remaining legacy on the third floor. At the Chiayi Sawmill and the Zhaoping Park, exhibits stitch together the past and present through fragments of history and imagination piece-by-piece, layer-by-layer. A Rhythm of Tree Forming the Forest attempts to view the relationship between humanity and nature as it evolved through the past hundred years through the scenery of trees and forests of Alishan and Chiayi depicted by the elder artists and the responses of contemporary artists. Meanwhile, the exhibition also attempts to re-explore the relationship between forest industry, forest culture, city landscape, history of living, and the city of Chiayi itself through multiple approaches as a reflection on the history.
Curators｜TSAI Ming-Jiun, CHEN Hsiang-Wen
Artists｜OTSUKA Asako、FANG Ching-Mian、LI Cheng-Liang、WU Yu-Jung、WU Tsan-Cheng、Walking Grass Agriculture、LIN Yu-Shan、LIN Kuo-Chi、CHIU Zih-Yan、
CHIU Chen-Hung、KAO Ya-Ting、HSU Jui-Fu、SHIY De-Jinn、HOTTA Seiji、KUO Po-Chuan、CHEN Cheng-Po、HOUNG Tung-Hung、SUZUKI Takahiko、OU-YANG Wen、TSAI Pou-Ching、Leo LIU、LO Yi-Chun