Contain Yourselves: The Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival

Organizing the Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival, the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan this time invited worldwide artists to transform a dozen 20-foot shipping containers into visions of the home that fit the theme “New Sweet Style: Arbitat.” Participants were encouraged to engage not only the interior of the container but the exterior as well, as evidenced by the faux IKEA logo painted on one container and the fiber-reinforced plastic tree-branch sculptures protruding from it-the work of the trio Lin Chen-you, Su Jia-xian, and Lin Wei-you. Andrew Binkley turned the interior of his container into a jungle landscape or, as he describes it, “a compacted island” populated by taxidermic birds and live flowers.

In addition to the 12 installations, the festival brought in a 13th container to sell art products. Museum curators commissioned a giant red archway to stand at the entry to the festival-located, appropriately, on a pier.