Border Garden – Qiaotou Studio (橋頭工作室) Resident Artists Group Exhibition

"Border Garden – Qiaotou Studio Resident Artists Group Exhibition" explores "periphery" through the photosynthesis of plants in different environments, much like the creative exchange and dialogue between artists at the studio using various media during their residency. The border represents an experimental, undefined field, while the garden symbolizes ecological diversity. Qiaotou Studio was founded in 2017 by artist Kuo I-Chen as the "STUPIN Artist Studio Residency Platform," an art residency cultural base on the banks of the Tamsui River, adjacent to the rich ecology of the mangrove intertidal zone.

During their residency at Qiaotou Studio, artists engaged in observation, experimentation, and site-specific thinking, using time, material, memory, landscape, nature, and the body as inspiration to launch a series of concrete responses to sustainability and the environment. Through handcrafting, recycled fabrics, local memories, image collage, physical practice, and plant imagery, they present translations of environment, time, and space in distinct forms. Li Ying-Hsian uses daily work and notes as creative media, covering book pages with black cement paint in brushstrokes like painting a wall; through obscuring and repetitive labor, psychological states such as "waiting," "unreached," and "unreadable" are transformed into tactile and readable experiences. Wu Chi-Chen uses recycled jeans provided by "REHOW" to construct a 14-meter-long "river"; the work is both an action of transforming recycled materials and a challenge to consumer culture, slowly constructing the possibility of regenerating non-natural objects through hand-sewing, reflecting on the continuity of material life and creative ethics through the layering of fabric, ink, and time. Chang Hao-Yuan reproduces the landscape of her childhood home through stop-motion animation and model installations, burying real emotions for her hometown in seemingly fictional spaces, constructing past landscapes into images flowing from the land to abstract memories; through the continuation and transformation of remembered landscapes, she presents how people maintain a detached connection with the land through imagination amidst time and migration. Kang Le explores the process of migration and how landscapes are shaped by politics through urban walking and counterpointing historical place names, physically investigating streets in Taipei City named after Chinese geography. Chien Chun-Shan explores the resonance between nature and philosophy through painting, observing the structures of leaf veins, placentas, and trees; using "Tao" as a conceptual framework, it is no longer just a visual depiction of nature but a sustainable manifestation of a spiritual connection to life. Fan Dong-Mei uses collage images to construct herself, pointing both to the body and to a state of weightless existence; these collages are not meant to represent "me," but to present a state where "me" cannot be fully preserved—a thinning, exiting self. Huang Wei-Yun focuses on female issues, connecting them with her own life experience of having a female body; in documentary records of solo performances, she showcases scripts composed from poetry and the weak, fragmented, and disconnected roles, attempting to grow new sprouts in the ruins alongside the audience.

The works of the seven resident artists not only respond to the relationship between themselves and the environment but, in STUPIN's core philosophy, point to how ethical and perceptive artistic practices can be manifested under limited resources. "STUPIN Artist Studio Residency Platform" is not just a site for creation but an experimental ground where sustainable ideas meet, resonate, and are practiced.