The exhibition if you HEAR it before me stands as a collaborative endeavor between the Lovely Taiwan Foundation and the Taiwan Fine Arts Foundation. Music artist Yujun Wang assumes the role of curator, meticulously selecting artworks and composing music for the exhibition—a natural progression from her earlier exploration during her residency in Chishang, Taitung. The aim is to foster a dialogue between Art Bank Taiwan’s artworks and Wang's experimental musical piece Mixed Voices Unaccompanied—Soundimage Pond, specially crafted for this occasion, promising an immersive and enveloping experience for the audience.

if you HEAR it before me delves into a poetic experiment in phenomenal music. It views the exhibition itself as an action that generates an interplay of "visual phenomena of sound—sound experiments of visuals," inviting us to see the invisible imagery textures in sounds and hear the hidden voices of consciousness within images. Breaking free from traditional, discursive curatorial frameworks, this exhibition harnesses the power of sound as a catalyst, creating a symphony of unfixed paths for viewers to explore the artwork. The approach promises a differentiated stream of sensations, igniting multiple interpretations and meanings of the "audio-visual relationship" in our contemporary world.

The exhibition takes an unconventional approach. Sounds act as a flowing guide, ushering viewers through a soundscape before they encounter the visuals of the artworks. This sequence awakens their senses, priming them for an intuitive experience that allows them to hear sounds from the art pieces. Each viewer's body becomes a point of convergence, where artworks transform into voices through the lens of individual perception. A patch of white space in a painting might evoke a melodic narrative, while the crevices in another whisper poetic sounds. Perhaps the gaps within an image resonate with abstract, dynamic tones. Alternatively, a specific piece might spark a personal memory, drawing forth a long-forgotten sound from within. Ultimately, this approach fosters a multi-sensory experience that transcends the usual, singular way of viewing art.

if you HEAR it before me also involved 106 Chishang residents, inviting them to participate in a sound experiment of a cappella. These participants listened to the Water’s Tetralogy a collection of voices woven from the fabric of Chishang life. As these familiar sounds sparked transient memories, participants were invited to vocalize them. Inspired by Georges Seurat's stippling technique, these individual voices, ranging from toddlers to octogenarians, were treated as "sound dots." Layered together, following the pulse of these diverse voices, they formed a vibrant sonic landscape titled Mixed Voices Unaccompanied—Soundimage Pond. This collective creation compels us to consider how the sound fragments of our lives might be painted into a sonic imprint of our time. Here, non-verbal human voices transcend abstraction, entering a latent space of shared consciousness. It embodies the sentiment expressed by artist Mark Rothko: "A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience."

Structured around five core themes—essence and geographical relations, innovative use of light and artistic media, concept and medium, consciousness and time, and life and boundaries—the exhibition showcases twenty-one meticulously curated pieces sourced from Art Bank Taiwan's extensive collection. Simultaneously, Mixed Voices Unaccompanied—Soundimage Pond transitions from the invisible into the visible realms, with its flowing sounds permeating the exhibition space. Time, the essence of music, becomes palpable. The phrase "if you hear it BEFORE me" conveys a temporal disparity, where one witnesses the music's fading while another perceives its emergence—a perpetual cycle of demise and renewal, constantly in motion. Furthermore, "if YOU hear it before ME" allows for changeable perspectives, as the pronouns could represent any figurative or abstract names, reshaping the dynamics between subject and object, thereby birthing new realms of possibility within the dialogue.

This exhibition guides the audience to traverse from the auditory realm into the visual space, facilitating yet another transition from the visual to the auditory landscape, before expanding the boundaries of consciousness. The subtle sensations pulsating within the consciousness of the observer are concealed yet present.

They remain hidden,

Eager for you to hear them before me...