Discovered
Discovered
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When did the figure appear?
When did the sound disappear?
On that day, no one noticed—
Or perhaps, they were afraid to notice, afraid of being noticed.
The National Human Rights Museum's "Paintings and Words: A Story of an Island" human rights education picture book workshop's third-prize-winning work is based on Taiwan's martial law era, depicting a story that feels both fictional and real—about collective and individual memories of the land, about authoritarianism invasively forcing countless family histories and life stories to play out a real yet absurd drama. Within this, every scene is filled with unspeakable, unfathomable silence, loneliness, and darkness...
Through experiments with text and imagery, author Chen Wei-yen, guided by extensive questioning, attempts to explore: What do we need to discover? What will we discover? Who is afraid to discover? And who is afraid of being discovered? Moreover, why is there so much avoidance? And why is there so much unknown? And when we directly confront and unveil those sealed lives, what then?
In the book, he portrays a seemingly calm yet turbulent drama of an unknown person's life, and within this life drama, he poses one question after another; it is a dialogue with readers, a dialogue with oneself, and even more so, a dialogue between Taiwanese people and Taiwanese society—the value of human rights is timeless, the practice of democracy is not easily obtained. In this picture book, we open up opportunities for dialogue, using art and literature to explore and discover the images of victims and the various harms of the authoritarian regime in the past; to clearly see how many and how deep the scars left by the authoritarian regime are in each family and each life, only then can we have the opportunity to heal these scars, and the collective rupture and pain can have a chance to heal, thereby learning from the experience and becoming better versions of ourselves in the future.
Features of this book
★ The grand prize winner of the third "Paintings and Words: A Story of an Island" human rights education picture book workshop hosted by the National Human Rights Museum.
★ The interplay of real and imaginary images and experimental text with omitted subjects and objects transcends reading age limits, aiming to spark more opportunities for dialogue on the issue.
