Texy by Elanor Wang

Over the past decade, local governments in Taiwan have shown a growing commitment to establishing museums. Previously, cultural centres were more prevalent, typically combining a library, a performance venue, and a gallery in a single institution. More recently, the gallery has emerged as a distinct entity. Official statements tend to repeat a familiar claim: that a museum is necessary to represent local culture and artistic production, and furthermore build upon local identity.

The Pingtung County Art Museum follows this line of thinking. The museum opened in March 2026, housed in a former tobacco factory built in 1936. As is often the case with newly established institutions, its inaugural exhibitions carry a particular burden. They are expected to articulate both vision and mission. One exhibition, Flowers in Full Bloom: Contemporary Japanese Art Exhibition, is outward-facing. It is prominently featured in publicity materials and signals an ambition to situate the museum within an international context. The other, Tuā-íng Khàm Huān, turns towards the local. It seeks to establish a connection with Pingtung itself.

The title Tuā-íng Khàm Huān is grounded in geography. “Tuā-íng” refers to large waves, referencing the Kuroshio Current that passes along this coastline. “Khàm” evokes the force of waves breaking downwards, while “Huān” denotes the shore. The title constructs an image of Pingtung before one even enters the exhibition.

The exhibition begins with the ancestors of each race, showing Pingtung as a diverse place. It presents figures from the past, including wooden sculptures of anonymous Indigenous warriors and ink paintings depicting Hakka elders. A notable inclusion is a set of calligraphy rubbings by Lin Chao-Ying, a Hokkien artist in the Qing dynasty. The original inscription appears as a horizontal plaque in Shuangci Temple in Ligang, anchoring the work within a specific local context.

This is followed by a substantial number of landscape paintings, which attempt to reconstruct a sense of place. Viewers may recognise familiar sites such as the port in Donggang or areas near Kenting. One wall is devoted entirely to Sail Rock, depicted by a group of artists invited from outside the region. The landscape seems to shape identity. Locality here becomes a matter of selection. Through images, these works reinforce and reconstruct a particular vision of Pingtung’s landscape. It raises questions of what constitutes a “local” landscape. Which visual elements signal a sense of belonging? When the museum holds such a large number of landscape paintings, which landscapes come to represent Pingtung?

In its final sections, the exhibition returns to people. Artists are presented in chronological sequence, spanning from the early twentieth century to the present. This is a conventional curatorial approach, emphasising lineage and continuity. It foregrounds the number of artists associated with Pingtung, framing cultural production as something that can be accumulated and transmitted over time.

In this exhibition, Pingtung is not only a landscape. It is also a site of movement. Indigenous, Hokkien, and Hakka communities intersect here. People arrive, and people depart. The region is positioned along maritime routes, shaped by both inward and outward trajectories. If local governments use museums to actively construct cultural image, then this exhibition offers one such construction: it unsettles the assumption that Taipei functions as Taiwan’s sole international gateway, and proposes an alternative orientation. Pingtung is presented not as a peripheral region, but as part of a wider network of circulation.