2025 綠島人權藝術季
對抗遺忘
Duration of 149 Sea Miles, 一四九海浬的時間
The Struggle of Memory against Forgetting
The artwork “Les Rideaux de la Mémoire” by Bùi Công Khánh is currently featured in the art event “Green Island Biennial 2025”, held at Memorial Park — a former prison site that once detained political prisoners during the period of “White Terror” on Green Island, Taiwan. The event is from May 17 to September 21, 2025. The concept for the artwork was conceived during an artist residency at Walden Village in Ménerbes, France, in 2023.
With special thanks to:
– Curator Takamori Nobuo
– Curator Caroline Ha-Thuc
– Professor Dr. Liem-Khe Luguern, author of “Les Travailleurs Indochinois Requis” and the doctoral thesis “Les Travailleurs Indochinois: Étude socio-historique d’une immigration coloniale (1939–1954)”
– Journalist Pierre Daum, author of “Immigrés de force: Les travailleurs indochinois en France (1939–1952)”
Photos by Po-Yen Hsu, Tsung-Hsun Tsai, and Trần Minh Thái.
| Date | 17 May 2025 – 21 September 2025 |
| Location | 國家人權博物館 白色恐怖綠島紀念園區 Green Island White Terror Memorial Park, National Human Rights Museum |
On May 17, 1951, the first group of political prisoners departed from Keelung Harbor, embarking on a 149-nautical-mile journey to Green Island. Subsequently, political dissidents were transported from Keelung, Kaohsiung, Hualien, and other locations to this island. During the period of oppression known as the White Terror, these individuals were subjected to prolonged imprisonment, ideological re-education, and forced labor.
Green Island, a tropical island located 17.82 nautical miles from the main island of Taiwan, is visually within reach. This seemingly short distance is reflected in the travel time to Green Island: the round trip between the main island of Taiwan and Green Island takes 50 minutes by boat and only 15 minutes by plane. However, Green Island functions as a visible time barrier, creating a time and space within its confines that is distinctly different from the outside world.
During the period of White Terror, Taiwan, in comparison to Green Island, could also be regarded as an isolated subtropical island, detached from global connections.
This barrier of time effectively obstructed the influence of external factors such as surging student movements, anti-war movements, or hippie culture of the 1960s in the West. During the White Terror, Taiwanese people, including the political prisoners imprisoned on Green Island, were similarly confined within the broader society of martial law in Taiwan. The concept of militarized “re-education” developed techniques to deprive individuals of time, infiltrating every corner of society through entertainment, cultural censorship, and campus discipline.
Green Island served as the ultimate standard for the imprisonment of political prisoners, a place where, apart from death, time was most brutally stripped away. The island’s geography severed prisoners from the outside world; a mere 17.82 nautical miles was enough to isolate them from the transmission of ideas, from spending quality time with family, from pursuing their original aspirations and youthful years. The freedom of time, as fundamental as air and water,is a basic human right. However, during the White Terror, the Taiwanese authorities transformed time into an invaluable resource, a strategic move that enabled the exercise of power and the pursuit of their political objectives.
In light of this somber history and the suffering of the victims, artistic expression emerges as a potential catalyst for healing, unveiling truths, and resisting the deprivation of time. As one of the few tools to resist time deprivation, art can facilitate an international space for dialogue, allowing the island’s stories to transcend their isolation in the vast ocean. The pressing need to document these stories arises from the risk of their eventual oblivion due to the unrelenting passage of time. The act of recounting these narratives and disseminating them to international audiences not only serves as a means of confronting the perpetrators but also functions as a resistance to the deprivation and absurdity of history. Through the medium of storytelling, these narratives are preserved, becoming a testament that transcends geographical boundaries and temporal periods.
皮囊之夢
裴公慶
BUI Cong-Khanh
「只有動物才會對人類的苦難視而不見,忙著保護自己的皮囊。」—————卡爾·馬克思
1939-1940年間,法國強制從越南貧困農村徵召勞工,將他們送往法國的武器工廠、紡織廠、造船廠等處,為對抗納粹德國勞動。戰後,法國政府未送他們回國,而是派往南方農場種植稻米,以緩解糧食短缺。數千人因勞累、惡劣環境與苛刻待遇死亡。
他們從未穿上軍服,僅每年發放一套藍色工人服,卻被誤認為是為敵方效力的士兵。當法國政府遣返這些人時,越南社會懷疑他們是法國的爪牙,導致他們生活困難,有人加入越盟以證明立場,其餘則焚毀身份文件,回鄉務農,在貧困與疾病中度過餘生。
作品中的窗簾象徵皮毛,如同一層溫暖的遮蔽,包裹著這些人在異鄉十年漂泊的夢想。他們被連根拔起,在革命發源地的法國卻遭剝奪生存與人性的權利,成為戰爭中最無聲的犧牲者。
錄像、布料製成的窗簾、刺繡、宣紙繪畫
160cm x 160cm
2023-2025
裴公慶(BUI Cong-Khanh)是一位對文化遺產的社會認知深感興趣的藝術家。作為1990年代最早獲得國際聲譽的越南藝術家之一,他的行為藝術、裝置、錄像與繪畫挑戰藝術與社會的界限,在東南亞及國際藝壇獲得廣泛關注。
1972年生於 港,這座沿海城市在越戰期間會是美軍的重要駐地。他在鄰近的會安成長,這座歷史悠久的貿易港口自18 世紀以來便是華人與日本商人的聚集地。因此,裴公強的藝術經常反映越南交織錯綜的歷史,探討這個國家如何在殖民統治、政治獨立與經濟發展之間擺盪,展現其堅韌與矛盾並存的歷史進程。
THE GRAINS OF EXILE
BUI Cong-Khanh
“Only animals turn away from human suffering and busy themselves looking after their own skin.” – Karl Marx.
They were farmers from poor Vietnamese villages, who were forcibly recruited in 1939-1940 to go to France, to work as forced laborers in weapons factories, textile factories, shipyards… in the war against Nazi Germany. When France won the war, these people were kept and sent to the south to continue rice farming to increase the food shortage after the war. Thousands of them died from exhaustion, the harsh weather and miserable working conditions. They never wore a soldier’s uniform for a day, they were only given a set of blue workers’ clothes every year, but the way people called them “soldiers – soldier labores” was misunderstood as being soldiers for France, the enemy of Vietnam at that time. Therefore, when these people were sent back to Vietnam by the French government, they were suspected by the people of the country as being the enemy’s lackeys, so they encountered many difficulties in life, some had to join the Viet Minh, the rest burned all related documents, returned to being rice farmers and lived with old age, illness and poverty.
The curtain symbolizes the fur, a warm blanket that enveloped the dreams of people who had been lost for 10 years of their youth in a foreign land, uprooted from their roots, deprived of all rights to live and be human in a civilized country like France, where the world’s revolutionary movements began.
Video, curtains made of fabric, embroidery, paintings on rice paper
160cm x 160cm
2023-2025
BUI Cong-Khanh is an artist deeply fascinated with social assumptions of culture heritage. As one of the first local artists to gain an international reputation in the 1990s, with his performances questioning restrictions of installation, video and drawing with successful showcase across the South East Asian region and beyond.
Born in 1972 in Da Nang, a coastal city dominated by American Gls during the Vietnam War and growing up in Hoi An, a nearby historic trading port that was a bustling immigrant town for Chinese and Japanese merchants since the 18th Century, Bui’s art often reflects the complex interwoven history of Vietnam, examining its resilient, yet destructive dance between colonial occupation, political independence and economic progress.