Taiwan Today

Sometimes the path to artistic creation starts with a chance remark, as was the case with Lin Hsin-chen (林幸珍), now a master in quilt art. “My husband can do beautiful needlework. Once, he made fun of me because I didn’t know how to sew on a button,” the artist says of the embarrassing moment she had 28 years ago. The experience goaded Lin to perfect her needlework skills, which in turn led her to try patchwork and then explore art quilting. In 2004, one of her creations was exhibited abroad for the first time at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in the United States. The artist deems that a turning point for her in the world of quilt art. Three years later, Lin founded the Taiwan Art Quilt Society (TAQS) in Tainan City, southern Taiwan, a milestone in the development of the art form locally.

Making patchwork accessories like handbags and wallets has long been a popular hobby for people, mostly women, in Taiwan. Many start by reading books about the skill or by taking classes. Lin taught herself patchwork by reading Western publications, although most of the teaching materials available in Taiwan were written by Japanese experts. “Through these books, Japanese craftspeople have played a crucial role in helping many enthusiasts in Taiwan hone their patchwork skills,” Lin says, “but the Japanese influence … hasn’t really gone beyond that.”

Yeh Mei-hua (葉美華) learned about crafting patchwork accessories in 1993 by taking classes in Taichung City, central Taiwan. Three years later, she opened her own studio in the city and started to teach novices. Still, she had never seen quilt art until she visited the first Taiwan International Quilt Exhibition, which was organized by TAQS in Tainan City in 2009. “I felt overwhelmed. I’d never known patchwork could be heightened to the level of art,” the 48-year-old says of the exhibits shown at the event. “What I saw at that show was totally different from what I’d been doing.”

“Making a handbag is all about producing a great-looking patchwork design with geometric patterns, but art quilting is about your soul and mind. It’s about expressing your feelings as you sit all by yourself doing needlework,” echoes quilt artist Chen Chin-luan (陳錦鸞), noting that she feels especially calm when she is working on a piece.

Without a doubt, TAQS has given a major boost to art quilting in Taiwan. The organization evolved out of a patchwork class that Lin has taught since 2000 at a community college in Tainan, and the society has more than 60 members throughout the country today. The group serves as a platform for these quilt art lovers—only one of whom is male—to meet regularly to view each other’s creations. More importantly, it organizes events such as the Taiwan International Quilt Exhibition, which not only broadens the horizons of local artists, but also shares local talent with the world. To date, TAQS has held the event twice, in 2009 and 2012. A third show is scheduled to take place in March 2016. The theme for next year’s event is environmental protection. TAQS has already started to collect works from home and abroad, which must be submitted to the organizer before November this year in order to be entered in the exhibition.

“There’re many surprises in the process of creating quilt art. When I put together fabric scraps of different patterns and colors, the results can be quite interesting and surprising,” says Chuang Huei-lan (莊惠蘭), who took up patchwork and then art quilting after retiring from a teaching job in 2002. The international exhibition launched by TAQS led to even more surprises. “Artists from the West are especially inspiring. They’re so bold and free in their artistic creations, and use a wide range of materials in their works,” she says.

At the same time, the TAQS exhibition has gradually been making its mark abroad. While the first and second exhibitions focused on individual artists, the third is targeting group entries from national quilting organizations worldwide, many of which will send artworks created by their most prominent members. Lin says organizations from 12 countries had already registered for the 2016 event by May this year.

Lin’s reputation likely helps the exhibition draw the attention of international quilters. The artist is among the 16 Taiwanese members of Studio Art Quilt Associates, which is based in Storrs, Connecticut in the United States and is one of the most prestigious quilting groups in the world. She is also the only artist from Taiwan to have been selected for the invitational exhibition Quilt National, a biennial event held in Athens in the US state of Ohio that is one of the largest and most important shows of its kind.

TAQS also organizes Horizons of Art Quilts, an exhibition exclusively for Taiwan’s artists. Horizons was first held in 2010 in Tainan, while the second edition in 2011 was staged at venues in both Taichung and Tainan. Though the show did not take place in 2012 or 2013, it re-emerged as a touring exhibition last year, visiting four venues around the country including the Fashion Institute of Taipei, a multifunctional facility in Taipei City run by the Taiwan Textile Federation, an industry association that receives public funding. The 2014 exhibition, which showcased 51 quilts, was also significant because it was combined with a show displaying pieces from the Round Robin Quilt Creative Project, an international program for the creation of collaborative works. The joint exhibition proved so popular that TAQS extended the event into 2015 and added four more stops to the tour schedule.

Lin says the Round Robin Quilt Creative Project, which was also organized by TAQS, was a first in the quilting world. Twenty artists were selected from each of three countries—Taiwan, Japan and South Korea—for a total of 60 artists. Each artist initiated a quilt, including choosing the theme of the piece. The work was then sent on to one quilter in each of the other two countries, who continued the piece. The initiator of each quilt had the final say in how it looked in the end, as well as the right to ownership of the completed work. Lin presented the idea to TAQS counterparts in Japan and South Korea in 2011, with artists beginning work on their quilts the following year. All 60 quilts had been completed by 2013.

“The project was feasible because the three countries share many cultural similarities,” Lin says. An example is Whirlpool, a quilt initiated by Chang Su-ping (張素屏) of Taiwan. The piece features indigo-dyed cloth, a traditional handicraft that is common to the three countries. The mixture of East Asian aesthetics often led to excitingly unexpected results, Lin says, although she notes that some peers in the West were less enthusiastic about the idea, saying that they would not care for other artists having a role in their creations. Lin is optimistic about staging further collaborative projects, however. “Through this program, I also wanted to convey the message that TAQS is willing to work with artists elsewhere in the world as part of its efforts to go global,” she notes.

That being said, Taiwanese artists usually infuse their works with distinctly local elements, whether the pieces are created as part of a cooperative effort or as a solo work. In Innocent Happiness, a quilt that emerged from the Round Robin project, Lin used a piece of cloth featuring an image of historical Fort Zeelandia in Tainan City. Meanwhile, Leisure, an individual creation by Lin Mei-hui (林美惠), the president of TAQS, was partially created using traditional Taiwanese textiles with a peony flower pattern. This piece won the Judge’s Choice award at the 2013 International Juries and Judges Quilt and Fiber Festival organized by the La Conner Quilt and Textile Museum in Washington state in the United States.

Quilters give careful consideration to the kinds of fabrics used in a work, not just the designs printed on them. Lin does not use linen in her creations, for example, because flax is not cultivated in Taiwan, whereas this kind of cloth is utilized by artists from flax-growing countries like Japan and South Korea. Chuang Huei-lan has been thinking about using fabric from a qipao, an archetypal Chinese dress, as well as pieces of cloth left behind by her deceased mother and mother-in-law to produce works. “Including those textiles is significant as they’re unique legacies of a certain period of time in the past,” she explains. When asked whether she thinks it would be a pity to cut up clothes from older generations, Chuang gives a definite “no.” “My descendants might just throw them away some day, but they’ll last forever in my artworks for all to admire,” she says.

Indeed, art quilting is not merely about aesthetic beauty. As TAQS founder Lin Hsin-chen notes, it also reflects the history and collective memory of a place. “Needlework is pretty much ignored in modern society,” she says while applying the final touches, stitch by stitch, to a quilt featuring daylilies. “But there’s so much you can achieve through it.” Needlework is perhaps less popular today than in the past, but with enthusiasts like Lin, quilt art in Taiwan seems certain to draw more attention and become increasingly visible on the world stage.

Write to Oscar Chung at mhchung@mofa.gov.tw