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I Build A Museum
For
My Grand-mother

Folded August 15
75 x 122 x 74cm
2026

No monument was ever built for my grandmother’s generation.

This work takes the form of an origami crane, enlarged into a ceramic monument and covered with newspaper text from 15 August 1945. On the front page of that day’s newspaper, the headline “Peace on Earth” announced Japan’s surrender in World War II, while a smaller report in the margin referred to the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War. Together, these events marked a historical turning point that would shape multiple generations in Taiwan.

In Taiwan, paper cranes are often folded as gestures of prayer and remembrance. Introduced during the Japanese colonial period, this practice later became part of everyday life and collective memory.

Here, this history is transformed into a tangible monument. One side refers to the end of Japanese colonial rule; the other foreshadows the arrival of a new and uncertain political order.

This is the monument I built for my grandmother’s generation, in remembrance of how they lived through a prolonged period of political upheaval.

Momotaro’s Hacienda
2026

The peach is never just a fruit.

Momotaro (The Peach Boy) is a Japanese folktale widely known in Taiwan. It tells the story of a boy born from a giant peach who journeys to an island of demons to defeat evil. As a child, my grandmother sang the nursery rhyme to me, and we played the traditional Otedama (beanbag) game together.

According to my father, during the dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, schools distributed peach-shaped buns to students each year to celebrate his birthday. In traditional Chinese culture, the peach is also a symbol of longevity and blessing, connected to the mythology of the Queen Mother of the West, whose celestial garden bears peaches that ripen only once every three thousand years and grant immortality.

Across these overlapping histories, the peach becomes a carrier of layered meanings. It can appear as an innocent children’s story, a gesture of care, or a symbol of blessing, while simultaneously carrying traces of Japanese imperial ideology, authoritarian ritual, and Chinese mythology.

Here, power does not appear through violence or command. Instead, it is wrapped in soft, familiar, and culturally intimate forms.

In this work, I am interested in this contradiction.

The peaches appear smooth and delicate. Their surface creates the illusion of softness, yet when touched, they reveal a coarse and rigid texture.

I want the viewer to experience this tension: something that seems to be made with care, yet is structured by systems of colonial and authoritarian control.

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© 2026 Mu-Se Kuo. All rights reserved.

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