Hsiao Li-Hung: From Chicken Farm to Creative Ecology on the Tamsui River

Hsiao Li-Hung: From Chicken Farm to Creative Ecology on the Tamsui River

Hsiao Li-Hung (蕭麗虹), also known as Margaret Hsiao, built one of Taiwan’s most influential platforms for socially engaged and ecological art by starting with what was available: a repurposed chicken coop on the river’s edge in Zhuwei, near the Tamsui River system. This episode traces how Bamboo Curtain Studio (竹圍工作室) grew from a making-centered ceramics site into a porous cultural commons—one that treats residency, reuse, and neighborhood exchange as core artistic media rather than supporting logistics. From that riverbank base, we follow the long-running cultural action Art as Environment at Plum Tree Creek (樹梅坑溪環境藝術行動), developed with artist and curator Wu Mali. The project refuses the idea that public art is simply an object placed outdoors. Instead, it rebuilds public life around a neglected waterway through school programs, community planning experiments, and monthly breakfast gatherings that use seasonal food as a way to convene, listen, and stay. Along the way, the episode reflects on ecofeminist care, the cultural texture of everyday ritual, and why institutions matter not only for what they present, but for what they can hold over time. Keywords Hsiao Li-Hung 蕭麗虹, Margaret Hsiao, Bamboo Curtain Studio竹圍工作室, Zhuwei 竹圍, Tamsui River 淡水河, Plum Tree Creek 樹梅坑溪, Art as Environment: A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek樹梅坑溪環境藝術行動, Wu Mali 吳瑪悧, artist residency, alternative space, cultural action, commons, new genre public art, environmental pedagogy, breakfast gatherings, repair and reuse, ecofeminism, civic infrastructure, archiving Key references  Bamboo Curtain Studio (竹圍工作室). “About Founder | The Bamboo Curtain Studio.” https://bambooculture.com/en/project/4152.html [https://bambooculture.com/en/project/4152.html]. Bamboo Curtain Studio (竹圍工作室). “Art as Environment: A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek.” https://bambooculture.com/en/project/2004.html [https://bambooculture.com/en/project/2004.html]. Kester, Grant H. Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.  Ministry of Culture, Taiwan (文化部). “Culture Minister Offers Condolences on Bamboo Curtain Studio Founder Margaret Shiu’s Passing.” August 30, 2021. https://www.moc.gov.tw/en/News_Content2.aspx?n=467&s=16056 [https://www.moc.gov.tw/en/News_Content2.aspx?n=467&s=16056]. New Taipei City Art Museum (新北市美術館). “Archive Content Construction for Art as Environment—A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek.” https://ntcart.museum/EN/collections_research_subject.aspx [https://ntcart.museum/EN/collections_research_subject.aspx]. Purtill, Corinne. “Artist Gives New Life to a Polluted Taiwan Stream.” Dialogue Earth, April 29, 2013 (updated May 14, 2020). https://dialogue.earth/en/pollution/5832-artist-gives-new-life-to-a-polluted-taiwan-stream/ [https://dialogue.earth/en/pollution/5832-artist-gives-new-life-to-a-polluted-taiwan-stream/]. Taipei Fine Arts Museum (臺北市立美術館). Small Is Bountiful: Margaret Shiu’s Contemporary Art Collection. Taipei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum. 2022. Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture (台新銀行文化藝術基金會). “Art as Environment—A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek.” Taishin Arts Award. https://www.taishinart.org.tw/en/art-award-year-detail/2012/463 [https://www.taishinart.org.tw/en/art-award-year-detail/2012/463]. Tung, Wei Hsiu (董維琇). “Art and Aesthetic Environmental Awakening at Plum Tree Creek.” The Newsletter 76 (Spring 2017), International Institute for Asian Studies.  My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang [http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang]

Prologue: What Makes Regenerative Work Last

In this short prologue for Season 2 of Regenerative Artivism, I introduce the guiding question for Season 2: what makes regenerative artivism last. Staying in the Greater China region, the season shifts from landscapes of repair to the infrastructures that make care and creativity durable over time. Infrastructures here does not mean only highways and dams. It means enabling conditions: residencies that treat place as more than a backdrop, neighborhood apartments that become archives and mutual-aid stations, disability-led performance platforms where access becomes part of artistic form, museums that operate like small commons, community theater that turns listening into social ecology, and heritage networks that try to protect local life as development and tourism push in. How to listen this season: three lenses * Material infrastructure: where the work happens, who funds and maintains it, and what limits shape it * Social infrastructure: trust, routines, accountability, conflict, burnout, and the labor of care * Epistemic infrastructure: archives, publications, protocols, and teaching methods that keep minor histories from being erased Season 2 episode guide * Episode 1: Xiao Lihong, Bamboo Curtain Studio (near Taipei) — building a residency as a living ecological institution * Episode 2: Chen Yun, Dinghaiqiao Mutual-Aid Society (Shanghai) — staying with neighbors amid demolition and redevelopment * Episode 3: Ge Huichao (Beijing) — disability arts and access as creative grammar * Episode 4: Liu Yang (Guangzhou) — the museum as neighborhood commons at the scale of a tiny room * Episode 5: Debbie Tai, Zero Distance Cooperative (Macau) — playback theater as social repair and ecological care * Episode 6: Zheng Dazhen (Quanzhou) — heritage as a living commons, and the risks of branding and displacement Keywords socially engaged art; ecological art; disability arts; mutual aid; urban commons; heritage and tourism; Greater China; Taiwan; Shanghai; Beijing; Guangzhou; Macau; Quanzhou My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang [http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang]

Season 2 Trailer: What Makes Regenerative Work Last?

Season 2 of Regenerative Artivism follows Asian women artists, curators, and community organizers working across the Greater China region to build the social and cultural infrastructures that make care and creativity durable. This trailer previews six episodes that move from northern Taiwan to Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Macau, and Quanzhou, tracing how regenerative practice takes shape through long-term cultural ecologies, mutual-aid and neighborhood archiving, disability-led performance platforms, community institutions, and storytelling as a technology of care. Release schedule: the season 2 introduction arrives on May 5, 2026, followed by season 2, episode 1 on May 19, 2026. If you are not already following the show, please subscribe so you do not miss the new season. Keywords: Regenerative Artivism, socially engaged art, ecological art, environmental humanities, Asian women, Taipei, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Macau, Quanzhou, care, infrastructure, mutual aid, community archives, disability arts, access, storytelling, ecological grief, heritage regeneration My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang [http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang]

Season 1 Closing: What Regeneration Asks of Us

In this short season finale, I reflect on what season 1 has been doing at its core: practicing a slower, more accountable way of paying attention. Rather than chasing crisis headlines, the season lingered with place-based creative work that often hides in plain sight, in classrooms, farms, creeks, kitchens, improvised studios, and everyday gathering spaces. Across these sites, regenerative artivism appears less as spectacle and more as practice: pedagogy, ecological care, institutional friction, soil as moral witness, and repair after disaster. The finale also names three takeaways to carry forward: regeneration has a timescale, regeneration is relational, and regeneration is infrastructural. Looking ahead, Regenerative Artivism returns on April 21, 2026, with a trailer, followed by the season 2 introduction on May 5 and season 2, episode 1 on May 19. Season 2 stays anchored in the Greater China region and asks what makes regenerative work last, focusing on the social and cultural infrastructures that hold care in place, from art spaces built like ecologies to mutual-aid rooms, disability-led performance platforms, and community storytelling practices. Keywords: regenerative artivism, socially engaged art, ecological art, environmental humanities, Asian women artists, care, maintenance, mutual aid, community archives, disability arts, access, infrastructure, place-based practice, Greater China, Taiwan, mainland China, Macau, heritage regeneration, urban villages, ecological grief, storytelling My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang [http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang]

Aluaiy Kaumakan: Weaving after the Storm

Summary Episode 6 follows the practice of Aluaiy Kaumakan, also known in Chinese as Wu Yuling (武玉玲), a Paiwan (排灣) textile and installation artist from southern Taiwan, and asks how weaving can become a method of cultural survival after climate disaster and forced relocation. Moving between community-based making and large-scale installation, this episode stays close to the material intelligence of lemikalik （纏繞）, a concentric-circle weaving technique that turns care, tension, and repair into form. Set in the wake of Typhoon Morakot （台风莫拉克） in 2009 and the resettlement of mountain communities, the story traces how Aluaiy’s practice shifts from individual mastery toward collective process: weaving circles as social infrastructure, and touch-based acts of return through rubbings and traces gathered from ancestral lands. Two major installations anchor the episode, Cevulj – Path of a Family and Semasipu – Remembering Our Intimacies, each offering a different vocabulary for shelter, continuity, and mourning without closure. Keywords Paiwan （排灣）; Paridrayan （大社部落）; Sandimen（三地門）; Typhoon Morakot （台风莫拉克）; relocation and resettlement; lemikalik （纏繞）; semasipu; rubbings and traces; cultural infrastructure; indigenous art; shelter; kinship ecology Key References  Biennale of Sydney. “Aluaiy Kaumakan.” Biennale of Sydney. https://www.biennaleofsydney.art/participants/aluaiy-kaumakan/ [https://www.biennaleofsydney.art/participants/aluaiy-kaumakan/].  Deng, Tzong-Sheng [鄧宗聖]. “After Typhoon Morakot: Creative Narratives of Paiwan Artists Etan Pavavalung and Aluaiy Kaumakan on Social Media” [莫拉克風災後：排灣族藝術家伊誕‧巴瓦瓦隆與武玉玲在社群媒體的創作論述]. 藝術評論 [Art Review], no. 47, (2024): 93-138. Google Arts & Culture. “Semasipu – Remembering Our Intimacies.” Google Arts & Culture. https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/semasipu-%E2%80%93-remembering-our-intimacies/_QGofmnhZ8To0A [https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/semasipu-%E2%80%93-remembering-our-intimacies/_QGofmnhZ8To0A?authuser=1]. 2022. Helsinki Biennial. “Aluaiy Kaumakan.” Helsinki Biennial. https://helsinkibiennaali.fi/en/artist/aluaiy-kaumakan/ [https://helsinkibiennaali.fi/en/artist/aluaiy-kaumakan/].  Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation (原住民族文化事業基金會). “The Meanings Behind a Paiwan Girl’s Garments and Accessories.” Indigenous Sight (原視界). https://insight.ipcf.org.tw/en-US/article/666 [https://insight.ipcf.org.tw/en-US/article/666]. 2022. Liang Gallery (尊彩藝術中心). “武玉玲 (Aluaiy Kaumakan).” 尊彩藝術中心官網. https://www.lianggallery.com/portfolio-view/%E6%AD%A6%E7%8E%89%E7%8E%B2/ [https://www.lianggallery.com/portfolio-view/%E6%AD%A6%E7%8E%89%E7%8E%B2/].  Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program (TELDAP, 數位典藏與數位學習國家型科技計畫). “Paiwan Divination Pot.” Digital Taiwan: Culture & Nature. https://culture.teldap.tw/culture/index.php?id=672&option=com_content [https://culture.teldap.tw/culture/index.php?id=672&option=com_content].  Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Cultural Park (TACP, 原住民族委員會原住民族文化發展中心). “Wu, Yu-Ling (Aluaiy Kaumakan).” The 1st Taiwan International Austronesian Art Triennial (第一屆臺灣國際奧地利亞藝術三年展). https://en-tiaat.tacp.gov.tw/%E6%AD%A6%E7%8E%89%E7%8E%B2aruwai-kaumaka/ [https://en-tiaat.tacp.gov.tw/%E6%AD%A6%E7%8E%89%E7%8E%B2aruwai-kaumaka/].  United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). “Typhoon Morakot Situation Report No. 3.” OCHA. https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/china/typhoon-morakot-situation-report-no-3 [https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/china/typhoon-morakot-situation-report-no-3]. 2009. My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang [http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang]