Yuhua and Valentina met in 2019, while the latter was conducting her postdoctoral research in Taiwan. Their common passion for art, culture, and drawing, as well as their common regret of not having attended Fine Arts School, turned into a close friendship. When Valentina came back to Taiwan for her research on deconsecration rituals, Yuhua sustained and accompanied her. While Valentina was back to her hometown, Bologna, for Christmas, a colorful, handmade notebook attracted her attention.
It was the perfect gift for Yuhua, for her warm friendship and generous help throughout the fieldwork. When Yuhua received this notebook, she started to keep a journal each day, combining scrapbooking with water colors.
*Click on the first image to open the photo gallery.
She also developed the idea of recollecting her fieldwork experience with Valentina, without knowing that she was also planning to turn their ethnography into a visual experience. This coincidence struck Valentina, who wanted to include her friend’s perspective within the exhibition narrative.
In discussing about the exhibition structure in Yuhua’s bedroom filled with notebooks, the two friends exchanged their opinions on what they went through. For Yuhua, deconsecration rituals were unknown and abstract until Valentina came to her and shared her challenges in conducting her new research. Whilst she understood the importance of finding ways to respect god statues once no longer worshipped, she did not expect that deconsecration rituals could be so complicated and shrouded in mystery.
Ethnography was enriching for her not only for acquiring Daoist knowledge and observing carving and consecration processes for the first time, but also for understanding Taiwanese worshippers better. In particular, she never thought that talking about such a topic could be considered as taboo and did not expect that worshippers would not openly talk about it (above and below: some pages taken from Yuhua’s notebook).
