A contemporary light and shadow art space emerges in an old street — Taiwan’s first-ever Comfort Women Memorial Hall

By MOOK Travel Editorial Team

Since 1992, the Taiwan Women’s Rescue Foundation has been conducting investigations into former Taiwanese comfort women, which gave rise to a dream: to find a venue to document and preserve the life stories of these “grandmothers,” the comfort women, and to amplify their unwavering strength in speaking up for women’s rights. Despite countless setbacks and challenges in finding a suitable location, in November 2015, an elegant old building in Taipei’s Dadaocheng district was finalized. The “Ama House – Museum for Peace and Women’s Rights” officially opened to the public on March 8.

The Ama House is Taiwan’s first memorial hall themed around comfort women. It showcases the development of the comfort women issue, the life stories of survivors, historical materials and artifacts related to the human rights movement, as well as artistic creations by the grandmothers. Spanning two floors and 150 ping (approximately 495 m²), the main exhibition area is located on the second floor, featuring permanent exhibits and a Women’s Power Space. One highlight is the installation artwork “Song of the Reed,” which consists of thousands of transparent tubes and 59 red copper tubes projecting the names of the grandmothers. When you place your hands near the light source, the beams cast the names from the copper tubes onto your palms, symbolizing the resilient life force of Taiwan’s thousands of comfort women.

The AMA Café on the first floor also features stunning design, with modern aesthetics as its main theme. It uses double-sided metal and openwork techniques, allowing light and shadow to filter through dots of varying sizes, creating a highly distinctive composition. The Ama House was designed by the Shihe Design Team, with the overall imagery centered around reeds — representing the gentle yet unyielding, unbreakable vitality of the grandmothers.