This project includes two postcards, one illustrating the stereotype of my nationality and the other illustrating the impact my national identity have on my creative expression. As a Taiwanese, I grew up hating the fact that my identity has been deemed "controversial". My country never got a chance to earn its reputation from the world because of the piles of news articles marking my country almost as a scandal. For the first postcard, I made a collage from American news articles about Taiwan in a shape of a nuclear missile. With the constant threat we face as a nation and the overwhelmingly negative news shadowing over the real beauty of what Taiwan really is. The word "Formosa" means beautiful or fruitful island in Portuguese from Portuguese Ilha Formosa, a name we were given when the island was colonized by the Portuguese. I choose to use "Formosa" instead of "Taiwan" to intentional avoid the ill connotation linked to the name and at the same time express my frustration that my country doesn't get to use its own name in most international settings. Taking liberation back from what we choose to call ourselves.
The second post card is an illustration of the building that my grade grandfather built and till this day is still home to my grandparents. As a lot of my work express my studies in spacial memories and trying the define what makes a space a "home", I've decided to show the very first space I've had memories to. Different from the first postcard, I choose to only write down part of my street address where my home is in hopes that this image can properly demonstrates my slowly fading memory of this building that I love.
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