Green Island Human Rights Art Festival, 2020
If on the margin, draw a coordinate
Curated by Sandy Hsiu-Chih LO
Green Island White Terror Memorial Park, Taiwan
Exhibited works: Numbers (2020), and Songs We Carry (2017~2018)
Participating artists: Ashmina Ranjit, Jiandyin in associate with Baan Noorg Collaborative Arts and Culture, WANG Ding-Yeh, Eleng Luluan, The Libera work-gang, Lin Tzu-Ning, LIN Hongjohn, LIN Yi-Chi, HUNG Wei-Ling+ HSIN Pei-Yi, HOU I-Ting, CHEN Eric, HSU Chia-Wei, CHANG En-Man, Charwei TSAI
The margin usually refers to the verge of an area. Borderlands and islands have some geographic significance. Borderlands are regions far from the center, and islands are isolated lands surrounded by water. In contrast, compared with borderlands and islands, margins can better refer to states of instability. Therefore, marginalization is often used to describe the phenomenon of people or things moving in the opposite direction of the mainstream—that is, non-mainstream and non-central.
Non-central and non-mainstream marginalization can take various forms of marginalization, such as politics, economy, culture, geography, race, gender, ecology, values, and so on. At the same time, various forms of marginalization may also be interconnected, and it is difficult to separate them for inspection. The marginalized groups are not pure and mean. Therefore, under the name of “If on the edge, draw a coordinate”, this art festival attempts to give utterance from the margins in order to unlock the initiative of the margins, focusing on the margins to draw coordinates in order to outline a new ethical map.
Starting from the margins, artists use archival research, field investigations, image production, text writing, artistic actions, and other methods to dare to challenge mainstream norms, resist the existing social order, re-correct ethics, and draw critical, autonomous, and liberated marginal coordinates. Each margin is the center, where the coordinates are drawn. Individual artists use different reference systems to draw completely different margin coordinates. In these coordinates, the marginalized is no longer just the persecuted under humanitarian care, but a subject with its own initiative. In the 2020 Green Island Human Rights Art Festival “If on the margin, draw a coordinate” conducts marginal narration from marginal perspectives to carry out the social practice of emancipating the marginalized.