Pan-South Multivocality Trilogy "Pearl: Women in Art from a Southern Perspective" Part II: Selected Works from the Collection

The "Pan-South Multivocality Research Room" (大南方多元史觀特藏室) is a curatorial project launched by the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (高雄市立美術館) since 2019, repositioning the museum's link with global art history through the spatial renovation of a new type of museum. This project re-evaluates the museum's collection to construct an art collection and research context from the local to the global. Following the first part "South as a Place of Meeting" (南方作為相遇之所) and the second part "South as a Place of Conflict" (南方作為衝撞之所), the 2024 third part "Pearl: Women in Art from a Southern Perspective" (珍珠—南方視野的女性藝術) was launched, re-examining the cultural depth of the museum's collection to create a new cross-cultural vision.

"Pearl" Part I was co-curated by this museum with the National Gallery Singapore and the Singapore Art Museum. Taking representative female artists from the diverse backgrounds of the "South" as the curatorial theme, it focuses on marginalized history, gender, geography, and artistic practice, writing diverse stories rooted in the land. It presents the groundbreaking creations of female artists from Taiwan and Southeast Asia over the past nearly thirty years, showcasing the diverse and flourishing face of contemporary female art, and recording life journeys from the personal to the national level under a female perspective that continues to inspire the world. "Pearl" Part II continues the four themes of Part I: Body Landscapes, Ways of Healing, Migration and Inhabitation, and Non-human and Ecology, focusing on the collection of the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (KMFA), featuring 31 cross-generational and cross-media Taiwanese female artists.

In Chinese, the exhibition name "Pearl" (珍珠) was inspired by the title of the Chinese translation of "Indonesia Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation" (印尼etc.：眾神遺落的珍珠). It symbolizes the artists, like shining pearls from the southern seas, reflecting the world from the South. The English name adopts the concept of "Ocean in Us" proposed by Tongan poet Epeli Hauʻofa, presenting a cultural community that crosses oceans and island borders, showing fluid oceanic thinking and diverse convergence.

This exhibition embodies this oceanic worldview. Artists freely explore from the microscopic inner body and private memories to daily love, frustration, and hope, critically uncovering ignored gender perspectives, ecology, migration, and the importance of artistic materiality. This worldview also responds to the urgent needs of the Anthropocene, shifting from a human-centered perspective to coexistence with the environment. Following the artists, we wander between reality and imagination, legends and dreams, reflecting the world we inhabit and its endless spirituality. This exhibition invites the audience to walk into the universe of female artists and understand how, in life situations like islands in the sea, they meet the waves and tides of life with courage, imagination, and openness.