A Mnemonic History of Nature and Humanity: Prints Would Know

DURATION: 2026-10-16 ~ 2027-01-10
VENUE: Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts
ADDRESS: No.1, Syueyuan Rd., Beitou Dist., Taipei City

Since its opening in 2005, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts has taken research and artistic practice as its core mission, actively fostering dialogue and exchange among art, society, technology, and the humanities. In 2026, marking its twentieth anniversary, the Museum presents a project devoted to printmaking, A Mnemonic History of Nature and Humanity: Prints Would Know.

The exhibition looks back on two decades of collecting while reflecting on the future role of art in the production of knowledge and the formation of cultural memory. At stake is a fundamental question: How does art record and remember the world?

As an impression, the print fixes things into images and, through its inherent capacity for reproduction and circulation, has played a pivotal role in the history of images. From the illustrated taxonomies of natural history to the image-making practices of modern industrial printing and information technologies, printmaking has occupied a distinctive position at the intersection of art and knowledge. It is not simply a visual medium, but also a particular technique of memory.

Through processes of engraving, rubbing, and impression, things are translated into material form and preserved through the physical trace of the matrix. The interplay between the traces of manual labor and the logic of multiple production has positioned printmaking at a critical intersection of natural history, human history, and art history.
Drawing on works from the Museum’s print collection, the exhibition is structured around two contrasting yet interconnected sections: “Museum of Natural History” and “Museum of Human History.”

The former attends to the observation and recording of the objective world, positioning nature as an external object of knowledge. It considers how the framing of an image and the incised or impressed traces of printmaking transform wild and mutable ecological phenomena into visual records that can be apprehended, classified, and preserved. The latter turns toward the traces of human making and the affective dimensions of memory. Taking the human-made object as its intermediary, it reveals how time inscribes itself through wear, erosion, damage, and loss.
Where one moves between expansive representations of environmental landscapes and their microscopic reconstruction, the other follows a trajectory from individual affect toward social and historical experience. Together, they form a mnemonic history in which natural and human histories are intricately entangled.

Amid the accelerated circulation of images and information that characterizes contemporary life, the materiality, temporality, and reproducibility of printmaking invite us to reconsider the complex relationship between recording and remembering—a relationship in which the two continually generate, reinforce, and unsettle one another.
Moving from the external world toward the practice of making, “A Mnemonic History of Nature and Humanity: Prints Would Know” repositions printmaking as an interface connecting artistic practice, scientific observation, and cultural memory. The print thus becomes not only a record of what has been, but also a mnemonic device—an aide-mémoire and a point of orientation—for contemplating both the past and the future.

Artists
BANG In-Hee, Boonmee Sangkhum, CHANG Chia-Yu, CHOU Ying, IKEDA Ryoji, Johanna Love, LIAO Shiou-Ping, LIN Debbie Tsai-Shuan, LIN Ren-Hsin, MEI Dean-I, NAKABAYASHI Tadayoshi, NI Tsai-Chin, PARK Young-Geun, SHAIH Li-Fa, Sue Ridge, SUN Wen-Hsiung, WU Hao, YANG Jeong-Dih, YANG Ming-Dye, and YAO Jui-Chung