Tomb of the Soul, Temple, Machine and Self

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Tomb of the Soul, Temple, Machine and Self

2018.07.28 - 2018.10.21 KMFA Gallery 203

Artist
Jing-Shan Lang Chun-Ming Ho Su-Chen Hsu Chao-Tang Chang Chun-Te Hsieh Yu-Fu Yang
Jun-Yin Chiu Cheng-Po Chen Hsia-Yu Chen Chieh-Jen Chen Yin-Ju Chen Fu-Sheng Ku

Curator
Alice, Nien-Pu KO

The body is the last remaining frontier that mirrors complexities produced by thoughts, cultures, and ideologies; it explicitly and implicitly intertwines and interacts with these complexities. In the meantime, the rich metaphorical capacity of the body provides a platform for abstract political ideologies to be enacted. The body becomes a site for visual associations that connect narrative with knowledge, meaning with perception. The history of colonialism in Taiwan registers the body as a site capable of hosting multiple identities’ engravings. Although, this body’s construction is not completely free from the western conception of the body. One finds internalized Orientalism in this colonized national body, along with a heterogeneity produced by repeated setback and frustration. Upon close examination, one can see in Taiwanese art history the transition from a tightly controlled governance under imperialism and cold war culture to a kind of visual culture-driven governance under neo-liberalism. In order to reject this cultural diplopia, we need the body to be inscribed. We need to examine different imaginaries and possibilities around how history could be displayed or manifested by the body.

This exhibition draws from the museum’s permanent collections, and centers the body as a medium, in order to discuss contemporary culture, forms of governance, and collective imagination in post-colonial Taiwan. It delves into the formation of the modern body through visual culture since the 1920s in colonized Taiwan, as well as the layered, continuous translations and re-translations of visual language over time–addressing ways the body serves as a cross-section that probes or intermediates between history, the Other, and events. The artists–Jing-Shan Lang、Chun-Ming Ho、Su-Chen Hsu、Chao-Tang Chang、Chun-Te Hsieh、Yu-Fu Yang、Jun-Yin Chiu、Cheng-Po Chen、Hsia-Yu Chen、Chieh-Jen Chen、Yin-Ju Chen、Fu-Sheng Ku–extrapolate, strip down, and transform, linking together independent ideas and layered histories out of different perspectives and contexts.