Mekong Cultural Hub

Bridge Building Exchange: The art of blending with the environment and the community

Sharing the same interest in developing a creative response to the environmental issues, on December 16th, two MCH Regional Representatives Nguyen Thuy Duong (Vietnam) and Ming-Jiun Tsai (Taiwan) organized the Art Talk: The art of blending with the environment and the community which invited the Heidi CHEN and Iris HUNG to share their experiences and the projects they managed at Bamboo Curtain Studio.

As the present managers and former manager of BCS, both Heidi CHEN and Iris HUNG have been working closely with the environment and community in the past few years. Iris Hung introduced the topic of Art in residence as a way of engagement that drew the audience’s attention in learning the way to work with local communities. She used the project Adventure time in Shezi: explore our hometown as the main focus example, bringing up knowledge from mapping location to blending local communities including Elementary school, Junior high school, and Mother’s group; Environmental educators and Artists.

Heidi Chen introduced the project Mending the broken land with water and two other cases. Case 1: River watcher, explored how rivers are engineered in Taiwan. Case 2: [Field trip project Asia] Life on an Island: N sustainable ways of living, gave an overview of reused and recycled, and further she gave examples of a project in Japan, as well as an exhibition of artist Mervy C.Puelo, Philippians.

Throughout the talk, the speakers raised awareness around environmental issues in Taiwan based on their projects. The talk received a good response from audiences through their questions and comments. The audiences focus their interest in the subject of art-in-residence, discover ways of engagement to the local community to create works. In addition, apart from having a better understanding of the way of working of Bamboo Curtain Studio, the audiences also gained new knowledge in creating a sustainable way of developing ideas and making art of sending important messages.

Green ArtLab Alliance

The art of blending with the environment and the community is the first talk in the series of exchanges organized by Ming-Jiun and Duong, within the Bridge Building Exchange framework, in which each MCH REP is paired up with another REP in another country to conduct activities in order to exchange ideas, expand their networks and knowledge which would benefit their local communities. The backbone of their project is to build an exchange program that demonstrates the unique role of art, culture and education in responding to climate change. Their next Talk, taking place on December 22, will explore the theme “How do art students react to the Anthropocene?”. Please follow the link for more information if you would like to join the discussion.


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