Green Island in Dialogue, Mothers’ Beloved Children

Opened at the Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park in September of 2023, the exhibition, Keep Opening Doors, presented the latest creations by six artists who were born when Taiwan was under martial law and grew up when it was lifted. The artists proposed these artworks to engage in dialogues with the works of Tsao Kai and Ou Yang Jian-Hua, our guides who had walked the path before us. 

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In May of 2024, Keep Opening Doors On the Green Island will transport the exhibition that was presented in a single space at the Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park to the island, and the displays will be readjusted and arranged inside the following three spaces at the Green Island Human Rights Cultural Park Oasis Villa: the Visiting Room, the Special Observation and Medical Room, and the Solitary Confinement. Moreover, additional artworks by Kiran Chi and Ludy Huang Yu-Chih will be included this time. 

Prologue from a Quarter-century Ago

In the winter of 1999, I visited Green Island for the first time for my junior college graduation trip. We had just eaten a very heavy meal before getting on the boat, and my stuffed belly wasn’t prepared to withstand any rocking, not to mention the boat we had boarded 15 minutes later was a very modest and crude vessel. I remember there was a wooden bench with a post within my reach and some plastic bags were hanging on it. Soon after the boat had left the port, many had already started to vomit. After several barf bags were filled, we finally reached shore. I barely made it to the hotel and managed to shower before passing out on the bed. The next morning, I was woken up by my classmates’ excited screams: “You can’t just sleep the whole time on Green Island. We have to go to the hot springs in the sea!” I then mustered the energy and headed outside. 

To this day, I still don’t know why we decided to take the boat to Green Island during the height of the northeast monsoon season. Why did we only stay for less than 24 hours after all the trouble we had gone through to get there? Also, why did we have such a heavy and greasy meal before boarding the boat? Anyhow, I had learned my lesson on the way back that year and refused to have lunch before getting on the boat.

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Mothers’ Beloved Children  

Twenty years later, I made it to Green Island again; this time as the co-curator of the 2019 Green Island Human Rights Art Festival.

The northeast monsoon was still aggressive in March, causing the sea to rise up and down, but with prior experience, I was fully prepared this time, both physically and mentally. The entire voyage still felt like I was riding on a pirate ship, but I managed to make it in one piece this time when we reached shore. The artists and I rented motorcycles and headed straight to the Green Island White Terror Memorial Park. The staff at the park gave us a tour of the Oasis Villa and the Chung Cheng Hall (where the prison’s new arrivals were “disciplined”), and the tour concluded at the Human Rights Memorial Park, where the Green Island Human Rights Monument stands. The monument is inscribed with words by Bo Yang, and upon reading it, I felt an intense commotion in my heart. Throughout the 4-hour tour before this, I was focusing on learning about the experiences of those who came before us, those victims of White Terror, but when I read the inscription on the monument, I suddenly realized that whether they were veterans or new arrivals, they were all somebody’s beloved children.

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In that era

how many mothers spent long nights

crying for their children

locked up on Green Island

Bo Yang (1920-2008)

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The profound imprints left behind with their lives on the line by our guides, Tsao Kai and Ou Yang Jian-Hua, are shared in Keep Opening Doors, guiding the younger generations to sympathetically feel and experience what those before us had endured. However, at the same time, they were also some mothers’ beloved children. Bearing this in mind, two artists who are also mothers are invited to contribute to the 2024 Keep Opening Doors On the Green Island. These two artists are both married with children, and their children are their top priority. During times when it’s difficult to balance their roles as mothers and artists, their children always come first.

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Kiran Chi: Let Me Prepare a Resting Place For You

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“Besides the sky

Who is tolerant enough

to accept the Sun,”

asks a star.

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“Yes, although I’m just a mere drop

I can take him in

Keep him inside of me,”

says a dewdrop with a smile.

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“The Sky and A Dewdrop” - Tsao Kai

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Kiran Chi arrived on Green Island with me in 1999, and just like that compassionate dewdrop in Tsao Kai’s poem, she is dainty on the outside but vast and generous on the inside. Before becoming a mother, she was fully devoted to making art, and her dedication to art gave her a splendid glow. After having children, she shifted her love and energy to her family, once again devoting the whole of her heart, mind, and soul. Seeing her again 25 years later, with a smile on her face, she is now determined to use her hands to make art again, which she had to put down all these years for the sake of her family. Determined again to piece back her sense of self from piles of fragmented parts, she yearns to create artworks where her heart can be found. 

The Resting Place series sees Kiran reflecting on what a safe sense of belonging means through an approach that detaches from reality, as she tries to console those feelings of helplessness from being locked up in solitary confinement. The pain and trauma may still linger, but now, we also know that love was and is always there. It is there to support us in our moments of weakness; it is there to send prayers through gentle silent sighs to loved ones.

Love is determination; it is a promise. Peace of mind is where I belong. I’ve embarked on the journey and am on the road.

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Ludy Huang Yu-Chih: Dot Dot Dot, Sea of Teardrops, Like the Sea, and Crossing the Sea

Dot dot dot
Dots are tiny drops of rain
They are morning dewdrops, beads on lotus leaves

Dot dot dot
I am going to link you together
And follow your course to write a big huge circle

“Dot Dot Dot” - Tsao Kai 

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When I first met Yu-Chih, she was pregnant with her first child. 

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Sea of Teardrops, Like the Sea, Crossing the Sea (2024) extends from a piece she had created in 2001 during a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in the United States. Being so far away from home back then, she was feeling quite lonely and began to use copper wires in the same color as the window grids of her room to weave. The woven objects she had created with single-strand braids allowed light to pass through, and her inner world from that year overlapped in multi-layers with the view outside the window. Metal weaving has since become a part of her life throughout various stages, as she uses different colors, shapes, and expressions to link together different stories and also her feelings inside. She uses weaving to interact with spaces and people, to form relationships, and to immerse her audience in her art so that they may continue to feel the energy that comes from her artworks. 

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Composed of strong and soft elements, Sea of Teardrops, Like the Sea, Crossing the Sea can be interpreted in different ways. The dewdrop shapes can be raindrops, beads of sweat, tears, or even the sea. These 50 droplets have come to form a sea-like landscape that invites you to let go of your worries, fears, anger, and uneasiness. Together, let us walk on a path that leads to good. 

Postscript: It was All Serendipity 

While typing this and doing research, I learned that the Human Rights Monument was originally called the Green Island Weeping Stele. This monument with the inscription that touched me so deeply when I first saw it in 2019 was erected on Green Island in 1999, the year that I first made it to the island. 

Twenty-five years have since passed, and everything in life happens for a reason. It was all serendipity. 
Serendipity, nice to meet you again.