Decades ago, large numbers of Kinmenese left for Southeast Asia to seek means of livelihood, not knowing they’d be calling the new country home for good. All they could do was send letters upon letters that were dictated, transcribed, and translated to loved ones back home that were gradually fading away from their memories.

Acting as a messenger, artist Yi-chi Lin brought along the family letters from southeast Asia that her grandmother had kept for decades and visited Indonesia. Following the illegible address in scratchy handwriting on the envelopes, she wound up in Bangka Island to conduct video documentation. On the cross-island family migration route from Kinmen to Taiwan and Indonesia, Lin utilizes her artistic practice of field investigation, family letters and photos, oral history—as well as the quadrilingual communication experiences among Mandarin, Hokkien, English, and Indonesian—to construct life narratives for the Kinmenese diasporas in east Asian history.

早年金門人大量離鄉前往東南亞尋求出路，殊不知此離去將從此生根異鄉，僅能憑著一封封代寫與轉 譯的書信，寄返給記憶裡逐漸模糊的原鄉與親友們。

藝術家林羿綺以信使的身份，帶著祖母保存多年來自南洋的家書，依著信封上模糊潦草的地址字跡，前 往印尼邦加島探訪並拍攝紀錄。在金門、台灣與印尼這條家族跨島遷徙的移民路徑上，藝術家透過實地 踏查、信件文本、口述記憶與中文、閩南語、英文、印尼語等四種語言交互溝通的經驗，構築出東亞歷 史中金門出洋客的生命敘事。

Born in 1986, Lin Yi-Chi now lives and works in Taipei. Lin received her Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the Taipei National University of the Arts. With educational backgrounds in both contemporary art and film production, her works take the form of video art, experimental cinema, and video installation. In recent years, Lin’s practice centers on the diaspora experiences within Asian geopolitics. Memories and dreams are collected through field investigation, and the dynamic images are transformed into her medium of necromancy. Individual life narratives are re-interpreted and re-enacted into a re-enchantment scenario, which she employs to summon the marginal voices and re-produce bonds among nationalities, histories, and collective memories. ​

Lin was recently invited to exhibit works in the Jakarta Biennale (2022), 13th Gwangju Biennale (2021), and the Biennale Jogja 2019, as well as her solo exhibition “Selamat, the messenger over the sea” (2022) at Honggah Museum, Taiwan. She has also participated in numerous domestic and international curatorial projects, film festivals, and artist residencies. Also, Lin has been accoladed with the Special Jury Prize at Huayu Youth Award (2021), First Prize at Miami Beach Pulse Prize (2019), First Prize of Golden Harvest Awards for Best Experimental Film (2021 & 2019), Finalist at the 16th Taishin Arts Award (2018), First Prize of Kaohsiung Award (2018), MIT New Artist Award by the Ministry of Culture (2018), and Honorable Mention of Taipei Arts Awards (2018).The unique atmosphere her artworks create is outstandingly experimental and subversive.