活動介紹
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時間：2025年3月9日（日）14:30-16:30
地點：鳳甲美術館（台北市北投區大業路166號11樓）
講者：藝術家符芳俊、與談人鄭文琦

I Enjoy Being A Girl，2022，單頻道錄像（英語發音，中英字幕），37分15秒

繼2022年參與高森信男策畫的展覽《海洋與詮釋者》後，馬來西亞藝術家符芳俊將於2025年初再次來到鳳甲美術館，舉辦其攝影－影像散文作品〈I Enjoy Being A Girl〉的播映暨座談活動。本作品為符芳俊持續進行的計畫「Anita與Ava：攝影作為自我修復的工具」的一部分，探討兩位兒時摯友的成長過程中，如何藉由攝影探索並形塑自身的性別認同。

起初，符芳俊在檳城的一間古董店裡發現一系列的肖像攝影，這些照片記錄了已故的Ava Leong於1950至1960年代間的身影，見證她從少年蛻變為女人的自我修復旅程。藝術家隨後與Ava的摯友Anita取得聯繫，透過多次訪談，進一步挖掘出更多的照片，以及照片背後的故事與脈絡。〈I Enjoy Being A Girl〉以Anita的口述訪談為基礎，結合她與Ava所收藏的照片，講述兩人在照相館與社交活動中的發現自我的歷程，並回溯Anita作為學校實驗室技術人員的職業生涯，以及在舞台上扮演女性的經歷。這些照片象徵一個時代——馬來西亞的跨性別社群曾擁有一個能探尋自我、身處充滿生氣與都會藝術文化之地的時刻。

藝術家｜符芳俊
符芳俊是活躍於馬來西亞的視覺藝術工作者，他以研究為導向的創作，立足於本土地理環境，關懷階級追求、文化認同、非正式歷史及殖民遺緒。他擅長透過諷刺與詼諧的視角，重新詮釋日常生活，觀察社會階層的流動與融合，並探討官方與非正式、高雅與通俗之間的張力。

符芳俊於去年完成紐約apexart駐村計畫。近期他參與的展覽包含《Ilham Art Show》（吉隆坡，2022）、《神話製造者——光．合作用 III》（香港，2022）、《海洋與詮釋者》（台北、達卡、拉哥斯，2022）；個展則包含《The World is Your Restaurant》（吉隆坡，2021）、《Let Them Eat Salmon》（新加坡，2023）。符芳俊於2010年畢業於倫敦傳播學院（London College of Communication）攝影學系，並於2012至2017年間共同創辦馬來西亞喬治城的藝術團體 Run Amok（冉阿末）。

與談人｜鄭文琦
獨立藝術工作者，2017年發起「群島資料庫」計畫，後者致力於梳理台灣與東南亞地區的共享歷史及其解殖作用；近年研究題目為台灣文學裡的跨文化植物書寫。2020年曾在高森信男策劃的《秘密南方：典藏作品中的冷戰視角與全球南方》中展出「文獻f：群島資料庫」。近年的策展計畫有：台北市立美術館開放網絡計畫「共域之一：群島之海」（2024/4/20-5/19），以及與藝術家Posak Jodian、Angga Cipta合作的《南方語言集》（2022迄今）。

I Enjoy Being A Girl Screening ＆ Talk

Time: 14:30 – 16:30, 9th March, 2025 (Sun.)
Venue: Hong-Gah Museum (11F., No.166, Daye Rd., Beitou Dist., Taipei City)
Speaker: Hoo Fan Chon, Rikey Cheng

I Enjoy Being A Girl, 2022, single channel video (English audio, English ＆ Chinese subtitles), 37’15”

I Enjoy Being A Girl, the photo-video essay, is part of an ongoing project “Anita ＆ Ava – Photography as a Self-restorative Tool”, which looks at how two childhood friends explored their gender identity through photography, as they transitioned into adulthood. Fan Chon originally found this series of photographic portraits in an antique shop in Penang. The portraits were of the late Ava Leong taken in the 1950s and 1960s in which she self-restored from an adolescent boy to a woman. After the artist got in touch with Ava＆#039;s surviving lifelong friend, Anita, the collection expanded and he carried out a series of interviews with Anita to gather background information on these photographs. A compilation of Anita＆#039;s voices is used as the foundation of this video essay. These audio clips are juxtaposed with a selection of Ava and Anita’s photographic collection that reveals their journey of self-discovery through studio photography and other social activities, Anita’s working experience as a school lab technician and her life on stage as a woman impersonator. These photographs symbolise a time when they, together with their peers from the transgender community, were allowed to explore their sense of self while contributing to a lively cosmopolitan artistic culture in Malaysia.

Artist
Hoo Fan Chon is a visual arts practitioner based in Malaysia. His research-driven projects are often set in local geographies and concern class aspiration, cultural identity, informal histories, and colonial legacy. By reframing everyday life with irony and wry humour, his works observe the oscillations and assimilations between social classes, the official and the informal, the highbrow and the lowbrow.

He recently completed his one-month fellowship with apexart (NYC, 2024). He participated in the Ilham Art Show 2022 in Kuala Lumpur and was featured in Myth Makers: Spectrosynthesis III in Hong Kong and The Oceans and the Interpreters in Taipei, Dhaka, and Lagos. His solo exhibitions include The World is Your Restaurant (Kuala Lumpur, 2021) and Let Them Eat Salmon (Singapore, 2023). Hoo graduated with a BA in photography from the London College of Communication (2010), and co-founded the Run Amok art collective (2012–17) in George Town.

Guest Speaker
Tēnn Bûn-kî is an independent curator and the founder of the Nusantara Archive Project (established in 2017), which explores the shared history of Taiwan and Southeast Asia, as well as their decolonization processes. His recent research focuses on the cross-cultural representation of plants in Taiwanese literature. He presented the Nusantara Archive Project (archive f) in The Secret South (curated by Nobuo Takamori). His most recent projects include A Sea of Islands at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (April 20 – May 19, 2024), the TFAM Net.Open Project |Commoning 1, and The Southern Linguistics Project, an ongoing collaboration with artists Posak Jodian and Angga Cipta since 2022.

REFERENCE

https://hong-gah.org.tw/activity-zh