Taipei artist shares 'mosquito spaces' with Indian students

Taipei-based artist Yao Jui-Chung mobilised a group of college students, to find out what had happened to museums constructed in Taiwan during its process of modernisation, and which had subsequently been abandoned due to disuse and neglect.
For his photography course, Jui Chung, also a professor at the Taipei National University of the Arts and the National Taiwan Normal University, engaged student volunteers in the investigative project on the abandoned spaces, referred locally as "mosquito spaces". The project was begun in 1991.
"I used to ask them to go back to their home town every now and then and to see the ruins with their parents or friends. Every week we met in class to discuss about what they saw and what they got," Jui Chung said in an email interview.

The artist said his students used Google to source information from news and government websites. They clicked photographs and produced a minimum 1000 word essay of the sites.
"This process was constantly monitored by me again and again and all of us chose photos we work on together. This was a very big task that had only six months to finish it," Jui Chung said.
A selection of 90 photographs from the project is being exhibited at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, School of Arts and Aesthetics here in an exhibition titled "Mirage-Disused Public Property in Taiwan".
The show forms the background to a 3-day workshop that the artist is set to undertake for students here to discuss public infrastructure and the state of abandonment.

"I wish the India students engage with their home towns looking for such kind of spaces and properties made by government. I am sure that will bring a different perspective to the existing thinking we are doing," Jui Chung said.