As I debated how the exhibition should evolve, an image always appeared in my mind — working around the clock to get everything done before the exhibition opened, like manufacturing products in a factory: dozes of process workers and I sit in the studio, embroidering new patterns on canvas printed with my digital photography.
—Hou I-Ting
The marriage of photography and embroidery lies in the core of Hou I-Ting’s (b. 1979) art practice. From Taipei Transformation Show (2003) to Bopi-Therapy Transformation Show (2009), to Complexing Body (2011) and Staring (2012), her embroidery and photography are superimposed to create a familiar yet foreign visual impact, expanding ways of thinking on imagery. Through the combination of foreign materials, Hou highlights the way we identify imagery in everyday life, while facilitating a reconfiguration of visual experience. In this solo exhibition, Hou questions the production system of art: In the production process, how much about the system does the body reveal under the influence of political-economic factors?
Aptly titled Sewing Fields, the solo exhibition investigates the relationship between the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) sector and Taiwan’s socio-economic development. OEM industries in Taiwan have been a tremendous driving force in the island’s economy. From family factories and conventional industries in the 1960s and 1970s during Taiwan’s economic takeoff, to technology industries today, the OEM business model has propelled Taiwan’s economic success and sustained living standards through labor and low gross margins. Xiu chang — literally meaning “sewing fields,” and pronounced identically as the Chinese term for “show stage” — is a playful pun that places a forgotten folk art within a contemporary art context. Through the physical action of sewing, the artist evokes complex social undertones that lie between the visible and invisible of Taiwan’s deeply rooted OEM production structure.
In the duration of the exhibition, the artist collaborates with multiple workers to produce her work on site. The artist and participating workers don the same uniforms, engaged in similar movements, each working on the piece in their designated area, moving toward the completion of the exhibition until the exhibition ends. The production of art is never easy to gauge or define. As the embedded OEM structure of contemporary art falls in the tightening grip of capitalism, and power struggle over naming rights for art, Hou I-Tingexplores through Sewing Fields the limbo where the dynamics between these entities reside.
