LI Dyao-Lwun

A child rests on a wooden bench, caught in a moment between stillness and becoming. LI Dyao-Lwun’s silver-gelatin photograph from 1950 captures the quiet before change. The children of that time would grow up under decades of martial law — some adapting to Taiwan’s rapid transformation, others left behind, unable to find their place in a shifting world.
    The student’s distant gaze recalls the figure of the younger brother in Chen Yingzhen’s My Kid Brother Kangxiong — a symbol of naive idealism amid unrelenting change. The novel, a key point of departure for the Biennial, and LI’s image both hold the same fragile yearning: for a future that might include those it once left behind.