Drawing memory by hand – Taipei Times

At the National Taiwan Museum’s ‘Small Living Room’, architect Chan Yi-chung and illustrator Lin Li turn buildings, journeys and everyday traces into living records

• By Bonnie White / Staff Reporter

Nested in Taiwan’s historical Walled City, a new exhibition invites visitors into the worlds of architect Chan Yi-chung (詹益忠) and illustrator Lin Li (林俐).

During his opening remarks, National Taiwan Museum (NTM) Director Chen Teng-chin (陳登欽) said that the exhibition, A Living Museum: Sketches of the World Through the Gaze, blends macro-architectural observation and micro-life experiences.

Passersby are invited to pause their busy day and enter the space to travel through time and space between Chan’s architectural records and Li’s travel illustrations.

Photo: Bonnie White

REDEFINING CULTURAL MEMORY

Founded in 1908, during Japanese colonial rule, the National Taiwan Museum is Taiwan’s oldest. Its collections are rooted in natural science, conservation and history.

With the Small Living Room, launched in February as the NTM’s latest extension, the museum shifts scale.

Photo: Bonnie White

It leaves the glass case behind and enters a setting closer to a home, a studio and a place where people might stop on their way somewhere else.

“The major purpose of this space is simply to create a space for people to get in touch with art and cultural topics,” said Phaedra Fang (方慧詩), assistant researcher at the NTM.

ARCHITECTURAL WONDERS

Photo: Bonnie White

Chan, who was responsible for the historical site renovation of the NTM’s South Gate area, animates living environments and old buildings through colorful paintings and technical sketches.

Each structure holds labor, damage, repair and memory.

Stacks of journals fill the first room of the exhibition. Visitors are encouraged to sit, lean in, turn the pages and follow the movement of Chan’s hand.

Seated on wooden stools and benches, they move through his colorful watercolors, detailed meeting notes and fine-lined building sketches as if traveling across time through his records.

The room feels less like an exhibition hall than a workshop still in use.

Pens, papers, fruit, a plant and a lamp gather around Chan’s desk. The scene suggests that the artist has stepped away and might return at any moment.

Lucky for us, he does. Chan will host illustration sessions on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 2pm, offering visitors a glimpse into his creative process.

If Chan’s room asks visitors to look at what remains in place, Lin’s room follows what moves.

ILLUSTRATING TRAVEL STORIES

Artist Lin Li is famous for her vibrant, landmark-filled illustrations. For this exhibition, she converted the space into a time capsule, inviting visitors to travel along her illustrated memories.

Her space gathers travel sketches, paintings, notes, objects and traces from the road.

Blending colorful paintings, engaged art and interactive installations, Li’s work challenges traditional travel experiences.

Taiwanese often speak too much about food when they travel, while missing how other societies learn, gather and live, Lin said.

Lin does not begin a journey with a guidebook. Before she visits a country, she reads their literature and watches their movies — the rest to be discovered on the journey.

Her sketches of Europe and Africa are based on days spent moving through public libraries, opera houses, grocery stores, streets and churches.

Boarding passes, hotel card holders and other readily available media become part of the exhibition. They show travel not as arrival, but as collection of encounters.

After seeing Europeans leave candles in churches, Lin created a place where visitors can choose one of her colorful handcrafted candles, roll a wish inside and place it into gravel-filled pots.

At the back of her room, a kitchen-like corner waits near a window.

A table sits where light enters from the garden outside. It feels like the end of a journey, when people put down their bags and begin to speak.

While Chan records places before they vanish. Lin gathers moments before they fade. Both artists use drawing to hold what time keeps moving past.

The exhibition does not ask visitors to hurry through. It asks them to sit, turn a page, follow a line, read a trace and notice how memory is made by hand.