Banqiao Railway Station Graduating Class Art Installation

Kristy ChaRay Chu (曲家瑞) spent eight months casting more than twenty pupils of nearby Haishan Elementary School (海山國小) in fibreglass for this relief, one of three works commissioned in 2002 for the rebuilt railway station in Banqiao, New Taipei, at a combined cost of NT$5 million. Mounted on an outdoor terrace wall on the western side of the second floor, the half-length figures were titled for a year then eight years off, the children meant to return as adults and face themselves. The work took a public participation award at the first Taiwan Public Art Awards. Railway administrators later leased the floor to a department store operator, which sealed two entrances and hung tarpaulin across the figures, and by 2014 Chu was asking for her works back, one of the three having vanished outright. The derelict installation regularly surface in Taiwan’s burgeoning urban exploration community.