Design festival underway in Kaohsiung

2015/11/17

The 2015 Kaohsiung Design Festival is underway at the Pier-2 Art Center, showcasing innovative art forms that explore modern uses of technology while expressing concerns over social and environmental issues.

Themed Wild Design, this year’s one-week event features exhibitions titled Untamed Fabrication, Untamed Environment and Untamed System, with works fashioned by 100-plus artists from 22 countries and territories.

“With unbridled ideas and the use of unconventional materials, including waste products, these talents push the envelope of creativity and help promote to the world Kaohsiung’s unique aesthetic landscape built on the foundations of previous versions of the festival,” said Wang Hui-ling, director of the Pier-2 operations center.

One highlight of Untamed Fabrication is “Growth and Deterioration” by Taiwan’s Chang Shih-hui. The piece comprises a series of garments woven with shell-like layers. Chang employs digital technology in her design process in order to mimic the shape and growth patterns of natural creatures’ shells to produce each 3-D dress.

Equally eye-catching is “Helping Hand” by the global nonprofit organization e-NABLE, the members of which devote themselves to using 3-D printing to form prostheses for those in need. The colorful artificial limbs on display are both aesthetic and functional.

With respect to the Untamed Environment exhibition, one praiseworthy artwork is “To Meet a Tree” by Taiwan’s Deng Jin-ting. Comprising crayons made with natural soybean wax, the pastels of the piece embody shade trees in Taipei City with similar shapes and colors representing the hues of their leaves, petals or trunks.

Another impressive piece is “Can City” by Studio Swine from the U.K. The studio’s two artists fuse aluminum cans with waste cooking oil collected from restaurants to generate a chair-like artwork, in hopes of raising public awareness of environmental issues.

The Untamed System display shows a total of 200 posters and protest signs covering topics such as artistic and commercial advertisements, social systems and mass movements, as well as ethnic and sexual discrimination. Visitors are encouraged to hold the signs and imagine what it feels like to be embroiled in social movements.

Running through Nov. 22, other programs of the event include forums, workshops, design markets and independent music concerts. One special activity will give festival-goers a passport to get stamped at various cultural hotspots around the city.

Source: Taiwan Today (http://taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=238933&ctNode=2194&mp=9)