An exhibition exploring the experiences and traumas of people involved in the 2014 Sunflower student movement is being held at Academia Sinica’s Museum of Institute of Ethnology.
Amis singer Panai Kusui attended the opening ceremony on Friday, singing songs composed for many previous social movements.
The exhibition is open to the public from 9:30am to 4:30pm every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. It started yesterday and runs through Aug. 31 next year.
Photo: Yang Yuan-ting, Taipei Times
Institute of Ethnology president Chang Hsun (張珣) said the exhibition aims to portray the subjective experiences, desires and vision of victims, while the audience, playing the role of a therapist, acts as a companion on the journey toward an unknown destination.
Exhibition curator Peng Jen-yu (彭仁郁) said that the exhibition’s theme, the Sunflower movement, featured the most violent state suppression of the public since the nation lifted martial law in 1987.
By reading and listening to the experiences of those who were suppressed by police on March 23 and March 24, the audience can reflect on how to create an “imagined community” on which the common values of Taiwan are anchored, she said.
She was referring to student leader Dennis Wei (魏揚) and 20 others who stormed and occupied the Executive Yuan building overnight in 2014, prompting then-premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) and then-National Police Agency director-general Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞) to order the students’ removal.
Peng said the students’ injuries and their demonstration are closely related, and the exhibition shows how young people with a strong vision of what a government should look like can clash with the state.
People who experienced violence are often depicted as passive and pitiful, while demonstrators are lauded as people experiencing injustice, but they are both part of the same picture brought together by emotion, vision, personal desires and the tendency of the public to glorify some incidents, she said.
The audience can therefore reflect on current events, as well as history, she added.
The exhibition has three parts: “The Secrets of Wounds” presents special symbols — a collective marker imprinted on society through state violence that has changed history — affiliated with known protests and social movements in Taiwan and abroad, Peng said.
“The Protesters’ Image” displays demonstrators’ wounds, and explains why they took to the streets and how their fight continued after the movement’s termination, she said.
The third area features video clips of demonstrators sharing their stories, and their narrative acts to pick apart the pieces of fragmented memories, slowly piecing the events of the day back together, she said.
The audience, which takes on the perspective of a therapist, is transported to the scene of suppression, she said.
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