I’m Showing You – How Big The Sky Is, 2025

I’m Showing You – How Big The Sky Is, 2025
(The story of Chiou Taur Wu told by Martina Bacigalupo)

Martina Bacigalupo

I’m showing how big the sky is is a tribute by Martina Bacigalupo to her former nanny Chiou Taur Wu, a Taiwanese woman who lived for more than three decades in Italy.

Battered by life – from a childhood spent in the fields of the south of the country to working in a factory in Taipei, while still a teenager, to the gambling debts of her Italian husband which forced her to work day and night – Chiou Taur don’t let yourself be defeated. Returning to Taiwan at almost 70 years old, she decides to take her revenge on life and do everything she was unable to do before: she resumes her studies, enrolls in ballroom dance classes , and begins to travel.

Through hundreds of photos received from Chiou during ten years of correspondence, the Italian photographer offers us the story of extraordinary resilience. Told in the first person, with images and words by Chiou, this work, published by L’Artiere Éditions, is a song of freedom, full of humor and poetry.

I was on a beach in Hualien, west of Taiwan, with my friends. There were people taking pictures with a small toy dinosaur placed on a mirror and I asked what they were doing. They told us that if we stood further away from the dinosaur, it would seem much bigger, and we could pretend we were dinosaurs too. We did as they said, and it worked!

Here I am in Korea, playing with the shark’s tongue next to those sharp teeth !

I love being barefoot. Because when your feet are not tied you are free.

This is Nantou in central Taiwan. A friend told me to pretend the water was falling between my arms. But I failed.

On this walk, on one side there was the mountain and on the other side the sea. I am showing the sea because I like it very much. In Taipei it takes me too long to go to the sea. I have to take two buses and a subway, and we’re all squeezed in like sardines, so I end up never going. The sea reminds me of Italy. I used to go to that little beach near the castle of Rapallo, you know ?

This is the Bosporus in Istanbul. It was my first trip out of Taiwan. I felt very happy.

When I saw that motorbike I thought, I’ve never ridden a motorbike in my life: I am doing it now !

Here I am in the same place of the crocodile, in Thailand. When we go to these places, we don’t have much time to take photos because there are a lot of tourists, so I quickly threw myself on the floor pretending to scream for fear of the tiger. A lot of people were taking pictures with this tiger, but I was the only one who threw herself on the floor.

Here I was in the garden of a hotel in Nantou, Taiwan. I remember there were lots of nice things like swings and fountains. And then I saw this carriage and I wanted a photo inside it because I had never been in one before. I only saw carriages in movies.

This is Hué, in Vietnam. The gesture I’m doing with my fingers means I love you. My friends have taught me to do so in my travels when somebody takes my picture. We took a wonderful ride on the river that day, with people singing and dancing on the little boats for us. We were happy.

On one of the small fishing islands in southern Taiwan there are small crabs who make little tracks in the sand that look like embroidery. I thought, Look at the beautiful work of these crabs! I crouched down and asked my friend if she would take a picture of me there.

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