House of Blue-dye
In 2019, artists Zhang Ting-jia and Hu Fang-yu were invited to join the "Artist-in-Residence Project" at the Taipei Hakka Cultural Center. We divided the project into four parts: (1) a workshop for young people, (2) a workshop for parents and children, (3) interviews with 10 local Hakka shop owners who moved here, and (4) turning the results into the "Hakka Blue Dye House." We hoped to create "events," not just "objects," so people could understand the stories behind them.
For the Youth Workshop, we invited 12 members for a one-day event. They did sketching, outdoor photography, 3D art, and group printmaking. We encouraged them to ignore rules and follow their intuition. We kept the lecture under 10 minutes to simply inspire their future ideas.
The Parent-Child Workshop invited 10 families. It was a shorter version that focused on sharing and the pure joy of painting. Parents worked with their children, sharing their art and joining in their learning journey.
For the interviews, 10 Hakka people shared their stories of moving to Taipei to work. We combined these stories with the art from the workshops and printed them on blue cloth. We successfully turned the blue dye cloth—usually a household item—into a way to record memories and writing. We built a "Hakka Blue Dye House" in the park's outdoor gallery. This showed the public that blue dye cloth is not just a craft or decoration; it can be used to hold memories and events in modern art.
In 2019, artists Zhang Ting-jia and Hu Fang-yu were invited to join the "Artist-in-Residence Project" at the Taipei Hakka Cultural Center. We divided the project into four parts: (1) a workshop for young people, (2) a workshop for parents and children, (3) interviews with 10 local Hakka shop owners who moved here, and (4) turning the results into the "Hakka Blue Dye House." We hoped to create "events," not just "objects," so people could understand the stories behind them.
For the Youth Workshop, we invited 12 members for a one-day event. They did sketching, outdoor photography, 3D art, and group printmaking. We encouraged them to ignore rules and follow their intuition. We kept the lecture under 10 minutes to simply inspire their future ideas.
The Parent-Child Workshop invited 10 families. It was a shorter version that focused on sharing and the pure joy of painting. Parents worked with their children, sharing their art and joining in their learning journey.
For the interviews, 10 Hakka people shared their stories of moving to Taipei to work. We combined these stories with the art from the workshops and printed them on blue cloth. We successfully turned the blue dye cloth—usually a household item—into a way to record memories and writing. We built a "Hakka Blue Dye House" in the park's outdoor gallery. This showed the public that blue dye cloth is not just a craft or decoration; it can be used to hold memories and events in modern art.