Patient Art Exhibit a Great Success

Ten Years of Color, Love Knows no Disorder. Patient art exhibit a great success!

In order to celebrate the 10th anniversary of our foundation, from the 11th to the 20th of September, on the 4th floor of the Living Mall in Taipei and from October 6th to 15th in China Medical University hospital in Taichung, we held the exhibition of rare disease patients’ artworks. These works demonstrated the complicated feelings of each and every patient, and revealed unbelievable talent and enthusiasm each possessed.

During the press conference on September 11, the vice president of TFRD Dr. Ming-Chieh Tseng stated “ We organized the ‘Rare Disease Performance Workshop’ and started up ‘TFRD Chorus’ and ‘TFRD Art Classes’, in hopes of encouraging other patients to develop physical and mental potential and foster interest in the arts in order to ease the pain they were suffering from.” The foundation has always been convinced that the arts can bring comfort to people's body and soul, so that inner feelings can be calmed and, thus, create the power of inspiration so that they are prepared to face life's issues.

The works of this exhibition, apart from TFRD Art Classes provided by the members, also included a number of very talented artists who are also rare disease patients. A total of 50 patients with 27 kinds of illness participated, with the oldest 55, youngest only 4 years old. Behinds these paintings were stories telling many touching stories of the richness of life. Ah-chin, suffering from Neurofibromatosis, is one of the small numbers of adults in the painting classes, but she had learned from the other children to cultivate a more optimistic outlook on life and illness in order to rediscover the good in life! Xiao Ning, suffering from Hereditary spastic Paraplegia, was accompanied by her father onto and off the stage in the press conference. Although she relied on walking aids, through the art classes of teacher Wang, she soon forgot about her disabilities and to learn to embrace life with a smile.

In addition, the exhibition that took place during the weekends included a number of patients who gave talent performances, including Qion Yu (Marfans) singing, Li-Ting’s (Epidermolysis Bullosa) nail painting, and Zheng Dad's (ALD) dough figurines, Hsu’s (Kennedy Disease) art of color printing, along with rare disease patients selling art albums, with a donation 885NT there was a gift of a special “rare disease MRT card” as well as other activities! Thank you to those of you who came this time to give support to these patients as well as witness the history of this decade, of Taiwan Foundation for Rare Disorders.