Date｜06.29.2023-10.15.2023
Veune｜Chiayi Fine Art Museum (1-3F)
Movements alter the perspective in which we see, and dialogues create a scale of understanding. “Creativity in an era of change” is this year’s overarching theme at the Chiayi Art Museum, which reflects on the historical significance in the aftermath of the pandemic and also reflects on how artists of different eras continued with their creative endeavors and made breakthroughs in turbulent times, as they responded to the times using art as an action. This exhibition is in collaboration with the Tianmei Art Foundation, which in the past decade has supported over 50 young Taiwanese artists to participate in the “Taiwan Contemporary Artists Overseas Visit Program,” with opportunities provided for the artists to visit international contemporary art places and to interact with artists at their studios throughout the world. What significance does such a journey hold for the artists’ creative careers? Perhaps there is a reason why these encounters took place. This exhibition references Here Is Where We Meet by English art critic and novelist, John Berger, and alludes to the metaphorical encounters throughout different stages in life; with spiritually intertwined dialogues facilitated without tangible temporal and spatial references, a space where one can encounter and interact with the past and the present is offered.
The exhibition invites 20 artists to share the experiences they’ve had with being on the move. Whom did they meet while they were making art? Perhaps, a former self? A version of themselves from tomorrow? Or from a further distant future? In their mobile encounters, they have crossed paths and passed each other by, but the experience of being on the move has added depth to their artworks or allowed them to look back at the past. The “movements” in life and the “transformations” in art-making are then finally seen in the exhibition as “encounters.” The artists have creatively expressed and represented those moments rich with life’s gestures, and more than just encounters with their former selves, dialogues are also prompted between the viewers and the artworks.
-Excerpt from "Here is Where we Meet" press release.
About Chiu Chen-Hung's and Chen Ching-Yuan's work |
Chiu Chen-Hung’s video work The Marble Workers tells the story of a Thai laborer working at a marble quarry in eastern Taiwan. Driving a specialized vehicle used in the quarry, he embarks on a journey that traverses different times and places. The landscapes along the way symbolize issues such as migration, memory, and globalization faced by laborers under a capital-driven system.
Chen Ching-Yuan’s featured works 2020 Page 7, 2020 Page 8, and The Guarder II were created during his residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in early 2020, a period that coincided with the height of the COVID-19 outbreak in Europe. The six-month isolation confined his daily movements and activities to a limited space, prompting him to focus on the concepts of “distance” and “space.” The former symbolizes the sense of separation and the possibility of connection within society, while the latter reflects the human longing for freedom. For Chen, freedom means the ability to move and expand within space—an expression of the power to transcend the present condition and its constraints.
