In 1997 I spent six weeks here as part of an art exchange program between San Francisco and Taiwan.

It was a very important experience for me as I was really excited by the visual energy of Taiwan’s cities, and I took many pictures. Of course most of this “Visual Energy” is actual meaning to those capable of reading it.

As someone very engaged in understanding and de-coding systems of added meaning in North American cities. It was delightful to be so bluntly reminded of how important context is.

Co-existing with technological developments that can render any space context less and imperialist art discourses that can reduce the whole world’s artistic production into a single text. This project “ Making Made In Taiwan” calls upon a contemporary relationship between artist and landscape where context and the viewer are essential to the work’s mutating meaning.

As a child in Madeira Island, Portugal. I often played with brightly colored toys. As I learned how to read I noticed it said “ Made in Taiwan” under some of the toys.

My mother explained it was written in English and meant the toys had come from Taiwan.

These Taiwan cityscapes were painted from 1998 to the present in San Francisco, Sweden and New York City.

Thank you for inviting me to your island.
RIGO 2001/06/01