Mirage: Disused Public Property in Taiwan

On View from May 30, 2024

Mirage: Disused Public Property in Taiwan covers 10 years of artist Yao Jui-Chung’s use of photography to expose Taiwan’s “mosquito halls” and it opens at the Museum of Vancouver on May 30, 2024.

Starting in the 1970s, Taiwan invested in convention centres, sports facilities, schools and other public structures, only to abandon them—leaving them to breed mosquitos, waste money and add to urban decay. Yao Jui-Chung, Taiwan’s leading contemporary artist and photographer and his team, the Lost Society Document (LSD), photographed and researched these haunting modern-day ruins, showing that photography is a form of social activism.