Draft:Chang Hwei Lan

Chang Hwei Lan (born 1964), has dedicated her career to art intervention, community engagement, and cultural exploration, with a particular focus on military dependents' village culture. In her artworks, she blended media to evoke personal narratives and multilingual dialogues. Transitioning into teaching, she combined those with solo exhibitions, culminating in retrospectives in 2014 and socially critical showcases. Moreover, her recent involvement in curating exhibitions underscores her dedication to bridging cultural divides through art. Her spatial expertise and advocacy for female artists mark her as an active members in Taiwan Women's Art Association. Her interactive exhibitions encourage personal and public engagement across various venues. As a public art expert, she teaches at Tunghai University and supports female artists in Taiwan. Her emphasis on spatial techniques and leadership roles in promoting art influence Taiwan’s artistic landscape.

Artistic career
Chang Hwei Lan has long been committed to issues such as art intervention in spaces, art engagement in communities, repurposing of idle spaces, and researching military dependents' village culture, alongside interdisciplinary art.

1990s
In 1996, Chang publicly launched her collection titled Wall Talk (牆語) in Taichung, employing soft materials to construct breasts, employing repetitive techniques to enhance visual impact. Additionally, flowing crimson liquid is employed to represent the intimate symbolism unique to femininity. In 1997, she had her first solo exhibition called Mutual Permeation Solo Exhibition at Banff Art Centre, Toulouse. Then, in 1999, she held another solo exhibition called ''Nid. Memoire (巢穴. 記憶)'' at Sin Pin Pier Absolutely Art Space Room C. In this solo exhibition, Chang Hwei Lan utilizes a variety of media including ready-made objects, images, old clothing, and casting molds. Within these installations, individual experiences converge with fragments of imagination and memory. These pieces, which were once "certain fragments in certain moments," engage in dialogue with each other in their own language, imparting a multilingual characteristic to the artworks.

2000s
Chang commenced teaching at Tunghai University(THU) and served as the director of the Department of Arts. Now, she is an associate professor at THU. Besides, she also organizes her own solo exhibitions at Tunghai University Art Gallery, and guides students in curating and creating their graduation exhibition and other types of exhibition.

Chang Hwei Lan's father was compelled to relocate in 2004 due to the impending demolition of the military dependents' village where they lived. Witnessing her aging father gradually lose his memory prompted Chang Hwei Lan to reflect on the concepts of "home," "homeland," "events," and their personal connection since 2004.

In/Visible Landscape, in 2009, was one of the group exhibitions that Chang participated in. This exhibition served as a convergence point at the National Kaohsiung Normal University Graduate Institute of Interdisciplinary Art, linking together a group of Taiwanese interdisciplinary art creators spanning from seasoned, mid-generation to emerging talents. Together, they contemplate and engage in the practical discourse surrounding contemporary artistic currents.

Therefore, in 2014, Chang Hwei Lan held a solo exhibition titled "STOPOVER" at the Tunghai University Art Gallery. This exhibition is a retrospective journey through time, featuring fragments of memories belonging to her and her family.

In 2015, she took part in the group exhibition, called Picking Back Up Diderot’s Old Gown in Taiwan Women's Art Association Art Space. One of the aims of this group exhibition is to attempt to deconstruct the social roles imposed by women, which is related to what Chang Hwei Lan focuses on, the female consciousness.

She also had her important solo exhibition in 2017, named Successive Contrast , in MOCA, Taipei. The works in this solo exhibition included Father's Daily Life After 2004  and Daughter's Daily Life After 2004. These two works are placed together, creating a strong contrast that highlights the irrevocable and frightening disappearances and ruptures between the two most intimate generations in the inevitable urban development.

From 2017 to 2018, in Art Center, National Tsing Hua University, Chang had her solo exhibition called Daily Love (愛的日常). Primarily, it is also initiated from the connection points with daily life through the combination of images and objects, reflecting the traces of life and fragments of the era.

Chang led 13 students from the Department of Arts of THU to participate in the 2019 Art Emerging Voices’ graduate recommendation exhibition at Da Dun Cultural Center in Taichung city, which brought together works from twelve departments across eleven schools for a collective showcase.

In 2020, Change was invited to curated the Next Art Tainan (台南新藝獎). The curation named Uneven Parallel And this exhibition invited artists from Taiwan, Japan, France, to present their artwork with different cultural backgrounds  and generations.

Styles and Works
Chang Hwei Lan has explored her personal artistic styles among her works. She serves her own specialty on the utilization of different spaces with varied attributes. Among her works, she applied different designing methods as well as materials in both solo exhibitions and joint exhibitions in her artistic career. In this case, the application of different materials and designing methods is one of the features of her artistic styles, in the meantime the utilization of different spaces is the distinctive part of her artistic style.

Based on her artistic career, we can tell that she tends to utilize spaces and venues as the presenting media. Plus, she serves her artistic works by applying a variety of mediums as well as different presenting ways. Looking back through her artistic career, she had held her solo exhibition at least ten times, and more than fifty joint exhibitions in places, including art gallery(art gallery) , art center of university(art center of university)  , and art museums(museum).

Chang Hwei Lan developed her artistic style from her very first solo exhibition Nid. Memoire (巢穴. 記憶). In her work, she used multiple materials such as old clothes, rebuilt models and ready-made products, to present the concept of a nest. Nest, the concept implies the sense of secureness, reflects the anxiety toward uncertainty about the concept of having from every individual. In this case, she served the installations of the exhibition multi-features, aiming to lead the audience to build the new connection and association between the space and the desire.

With the advance of the world, Chang Hwei Lan tried to remind the audience of the old good times, which was served in the other solo exhibition, "STOPOVER". In her work, she presented the live recording from the phone, which showed the world that we were living in. Soon, by walking into Chang Hwei Lan’s personal memories, the audience could walk back to the past by the mentioned materials. As the old stuff as well as the old memories came up to one’s mind, those artistic works represented the fragment of the memories right in that moment.

As the latest solo exhibition, “Daily Love” (愛的日常) was the work that Chang Hwei Lan talked about the relations between her daily life and creative process. Within the exhibition, Chang Hwei Lan not only expressed her self-evaluation, but also utilized some installations to tell the abstract idea of the creative process. To differentiate the interface of her personal privacy and the public identity, she had put more attention on building interaction of the connection patterns on spaces. With the interaction and connection, the audience would make herself part of the exhibition by moving from one space to another. In this case, the transition of the visual experience while moving around would construct their own public as well as private space.

Influence (Education & Feminism)
Chang Hwei Lan is a person who has been devoting herself to the public art for a long period of time, she has influenced people and their works in the ways of education and work styles. As an art educator, she is also an art creator, an independent curator, and a curator of art exhibitions.

In terms of education, she has been the assistant professor from the Department of Fine Arts in Tunghai University. In this case, she had the experience of lecturing university students about her profession, which is public art. During her time in the University, she was also the head of the Department of Fine Arts, making her more persuasive about her devotion toward her area.

Not only does she contribute a lot to the public art realm in Taiwan, but her works also make a lot of discussion to people in the art area. Her work, in the Qiaotou Sugar Factory(酸甜酵母菌--烏梅酒廠與橋頭糖廠的甜蜜對話), is discussed in an essay saying that she is good at repeatedly shooting in different scenes to make different spaces connected together.

Last but not the least, her creations have long been concerned with women's self-awareness and refer to privacy and sociality, creating a unique vocabulary of everyday art. She was once the chairman of the Taiwan Women’s Art Association, where she committed herself to creating arts with other women to promote the ideas of feminism. When participating in the association, she joined in a project called the Abode of Heart(心的住所), where artists promoted the concept that the home is like a fortress built by the women in the military village. Not only that, her work Border Narratives of We/Women(我們/Women的邊界敘事) leads the audiences to view contemporary female creators from different perspectives. It leads us to view contemporary female creators from different perspectives, starting from life to the perspective of creative reproduction.