Kamen Rider’s legacy
In April 2013, the FWPG brought Guide ByWood to Ishinomaki’s recently reopened Ishinomori Mangattan Museum. Manga artist Shotaro Ishinomori, creator of the Kamen Rider TV series, grew up near Ishinomaki and as a boy frequently haunted the city’s movie theaters.
After erecting the house on a bit of open ground at the museum, 18 artists each from the FWPG and Ishinomaki went to work painting it.
Lama Moltis, a Taiwanese Aboriginal artist, used Kamen Rider’s profile in his painting to express his hope that the character’s courage and compassion would bring hope to Ishinomaki. Other artists invoked the gods’ blessings for the townsfolk with impressionistic takes on the goddess Mazu and her two generals, “Sharp Eyes” and “Sharp Ears.”
During the two-week-long Guide ByWood heart-to-heart, Ishinomaki’s residents frequently brought the artists piping hot meals intended to help get them through the chilly nights. Each time they did, work would come to a halt so that artists and locals, speaking through interpreters, could share their experiences with one another.
The artists packed up the framework when their stay in Ishinomaki ended. In August, they took it to Otsuchi, which had also suffered in the earthquake and tsunami.
Chang Yuan-chien, head of the Asian Cultural Council Taiwan Foundation, has likened the white house movement to Rome’s Pantheon. Chiang Yao-hsien elaborates, explaining that artists participating in FWPG’s traveling heart-to-hearts produce paintings that draw on their own feelings and their understanding of the locale in which they are working, using them to construct a “shrine” very different from a traditional museum. To Chiang, the process is itself a part of the art.
The next stage
Some 165 artists have participated in the FWPG in the three years since its formation, including the likes of Yao Jui-chung, Lee Min-chung, Hung Yi, Wu Tien-chang, and King Cola. Chiang says the group’s next step, after it wraps up its participation in December’s Kobe Biennale and after it finishes the last of its mobile heart-to-hearts at the Paper Dome in Puli, will be to transform its framework into a rural classroom that can function as an outpost for educating people about Taiwanese culture.
“When all is said and done, art’s foundations are historical and cultural,” says Chiang. He has no regrets about the FWPG bringing its Guide ByWood program to a conclusion next spring, and is confident that its “heart-to-heart” spirit will spark a new wave of community empowerment in Taiwan.