500 Lemon Trees is a long-term multidisciplinary project connecting art and social production by Huang Po-Chih.

In 2013, Huang Po-Chih turned his exhibition Five Hundred Lemon Trees into a fundraising platform, utilising the resources of the art world to develop an agricultural brand. The project started from his own family history, addressing the social changes that have been taking place in Taiwan in the wake of long-term social and economic reforms. The artist's concept was to plant 500 lemon trees in order to produce a good limoncello, and to persuade each of the same number of people to invest 500 Taiwanese dollars (13.50 euros). The funds went to planting five hundred lemon trees, allowing for the reactivation of three lots of farmland in Hsinchu and Taoyuan, the artist’s home region, which, in the wake of economic changes in past decades, had been abandoned. The project also drew family members, local farmers and consumers into the narrative, producing a new set of community relationships, which in turn became an indispensable part of the evolution of the work. This art action opened up an investigation into life, revealing specific connections between economy, history and agriculture, and led Huang to focus on the ordinary individuals involved in the project. An interlocking, feedbacking, symbiotic system emerged, moving from planting to research to writing to infusing the liqueur to blending it. It is a brand. It is art. It is wine. It is an organism that changes flexibly and constantly along with life.

During the festival days, located in the tmStudio / sticky under·worlds where the current•seas programming and activations will take place, Huang will share about his 500 Lemon Trees project with visitors in an informal, conversational format.