Taichung City Government

The Taichung Art Museum’s inaugural exhibition, A Call of All Beings, features diverse artworks from 20 countries. To bring art into residents’ daily lives, the Museum has launched a series of public programs and invites the public to participate. Yesterday (the 14th), the intercultural parade performance Storytelling with Nature was presented by the participating Indonesian troupe Papermoon Puppet Theatre together with P'uma Elementary School in Taichung City, bringing residents an imaginative intercultural arts event. During the exhibition preparation period, Papermoon Puppet Theatre worked with the students of P'uma Elementary School through a series of workshops, including story ideation, puppet making, and physical performance training. Using their signature physical language and puppetry techniques, the artists guided the children to transform their feelings about the land, nature, and their own culture into creative work, building a shared rhythm of collaboration. The Museum’s curatorial team noted that Papermoon Puppet Theatre has previously drawn inspiration from Indigenous communities in Java and often engages deeply with communities through workshops, which aligns with the direction of this museum school collaboration, allowing stories from different cultural backgrounds to meet in Taichung.
This collaboration also incorporated P'uma Elementary School’s Atayal cultural curriculum. In the workshops, the artists and children learned about ramie weaving traditions and decorated puppet masks with ramie fibers after the scraping and washing processes. During the sharing sessions, they also exchanged views on blessing rituals in the Atayal land clearing festival and similar ceremonial traditions in Indonesian culture. Through two way learning and exchange, the children not only developed greater interest in weaving and traditional craftsmanship, but also gained a stronger sense of identification with their own cultural heritage.
The intercultural parade Storytelling with Nature took the Shaded Plaza and the public spaces of the Taichung Green Museumbrary as its stage, combining paper-puppet installations, performing arts, and multilingual story readings. Performers and audiences interacted in real time, transforming the public space into an open and vibrant arts venue. Chia-Chun Chen, Director of the Cultural Affairs Bureau of Taichung City Government, said that this intercultural performance not only showcased Taichung’s urban character of cultural diversity, but also extended the exhibition content into schools. She expressed hope that, going forward, the city will continue to connect art actions with residents’ daily lives so that art can truly become part of everyday life.
The “A Call of All Beings” series of public programs will continue through next spring. More performances, workshops, presentations, and community collaboration projects will be rolled out, with the hope that residents can continue to experience the diversity of art and the spirit of co-creation in the museum’s public spaces. The public is welcome to keep an eye on the Taichung Art Museum website at https://www.tcam.museum or its Facebook fan page for more program highlights and registration information.