Taiwanese citizens in a number of noted ‘graffiti villages’, have turned to street art to entice tourists and younger generations back to rural village life, in hope to liven up places that have been abandoned due to urbanisation attracting the youth to work and study in major city districts.
Two noteworthy characters that have popped up in the news of late are 97-year-old Huang Yung-fu (a.k.a the Rainbow Grandpa) of Taichung and 55-year-old Wu Tsun-hsien of Ruan Chiao.
The artists share a similar story, in that they turned to painting their houses and street walls to revive the livelihood of their communities, share traditional stories and express social and political standpoints.
“This village is full of old people,” Ruan Chia said in an interview. “These drawings attracted many tourists to come to visit,” he said. “The old people who were left here are no longer so bored. This was my biggest gain.”
Since, these villages have become social-media sensations and a reverse migration of millennial street art fanatics has occurred.
Taiwan’s graffiti scene used to be dominated by expats, as reported by Vice in 2016, when the likes of DABS, CHEK, UDON, OPTIMIST, and NOE could be found working the city streets of Taipei between 2001 and 2008.
That was before Taiwan became apart of the international, “graff spraycation tour,” as DABS went on to say, and everything changed.
Fast forward to 2016 and the efforts of those graff pioneers had evolved into a full blown, permission-granted street art movement, nurtured by events like the Wall-Riors Street Art Festival in the city of Kaohsiung.
Renamed the 2019 Kaohsiung Street Art Festival, which recently wrapped up the latest event earlier this month, among the featured names were WHOLE9 and BAKIBAKI.