In the installation "A Room with a View" Taiwanese artist Chen Hui-Chiao blends together different kinds of narrative: the artist creates with needles and threads visually enticing graphic surfaces on military cots.
From a distance, the threads look like brushstrokes or scribbles, yet what looks pleasant to the eye from far away is actually threatening when you get near it. Through the installation the artist ponders about dreamscapes, healing processes and death.
This is just one of the installations part of an exhibition that opened today (and that will be on until 19th December 2021) at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, entitled "Affect Machine: Self-healing in the Post-Capitalist Era".
Curated by Yu-Chieh Li, Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Studies and a research fellow at the Centre for Film and Creative Industries, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, and independent art consultant Gladys Lin, this is third edition of the museum's Curatorial Project.
In the transition from post-industrialization to post-modernism, machines came to be viewed as having the ability to generate and destroy humanity, but the machines in the title are instead means to heal the body and soul of visitors through sensorial and cognitive experiences.
The seven artists and art collectives from Taiwan and overseas featured explore indeed the themes of alienation and emotional release in the post-pandemic era.
Bombarded by the information and disinformation of social media, by anxieties and uncertainties, we are all in search of relaxation from tensions, in the hope of finding a sensory balance and a state of contemplation, and these multimedia installations are designed to help visitors to repair sensory organs, or invite them to adopt a calmer, more distanced approach to tackle trauma, pain and loss, and produce a sort of "affective art history" through tactile experiences, sound and alternative ways of exploring reality.
The" affective" art theme is explored from the 1970s on, starting with German artist Rebecca Horn's "Performances II", a series of film documentations of her early works which explore bodily sensations, pain and desire, transforming inner feelings into external movement. It includes her classic works "Cockfeather Mask" and "Pencil Mask", in which she uses her bodily extensions to interact with other people.
Taiwanese artist Chen Chen Yu's multimedia installation "Here Each Vibration Long Away" broadcasts instead news reports of the plague year, while ritualistic objects deliver a meditative sense of comfort.
Vietnamese artist Cam Xanh creates minimalist concrete poetry in which engineering codes are compared to biological genes and empty silk cocoons symbolize mechanisms of self-defense or healing.
"The Airport" by British artist of Ghana descent by John Akomfrah, is a three-channel video installation challenging identity in the post-capitalist era and tackling memories of trauma, while Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson's "Compass" family is a series of trembling mechanical sculptures that symbolize the mutually constraining relationship between human activities and nature.
The exhibition concludes with the photographic installation "Beneath the Bodhi & Banyan" by Singaporean artists Chu Hao Pei and Lee Chang Ming, documenting illegal, transient folk shrines set up under trees along Singapore's Sembawang Beach. They highlight how humanity always wishes for a beautiful and peaceful life, especially in troubled times.
But there are further meanings to discover for those visitors who will take the time to explore the museum spaces – from the importance of the communication between the body and the environment, and the possibility of transforming the anxiety of the post-capitalist society into poetic or theatrical languages to the power of dreams, divination and spiritual beliefs.
Those ones who will not be able to explore the exhibition, but want to know more about the artists involved can check out the Online Symposium organized in conjunction with the exhibition that will be held next week on 25th September and will analyse sensorial experiences surrounding affect theory, machine augmented experiences, and the role of affect in post-colonial art and discourses. For details of the event, please refer to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum website or follow the museum's official Facebook page.
Image credits for this post
1. Chen Hui-Chiao, A Room with a View (detail), 2018, mixed mediums (needles, thread, military cots, embroidered towels, basins, toothbrushes, toothpaste, steel cups), 16 Pieces, 90×200×140cm each. Courtesy of the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
2. Chen Hui-Chiao, A Room with a View, 2018, mixed mediums (needles, thread, military cots, embroidered towels, basins, toothbrushes, toothpaste, steel cups), 16 Pieces, 90×200×140cm each. Courtesy of the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
3. Chen Chen Yu, Here Each Vibration Long Away (Film still), 2021, 2-channel video, 60 minutes. Performer: LazyMiu.ASMR, Courtesy of the artist.
4. Cam Xanh, In the Beginning Was the Word (partial), 2020-2021, plexiglass box containing 5000-6000 silk cocoons, 60×60×15cm. Courtesy of the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
5. Cam Xanh, Information — and in the Human Genome, Chromosomes Chapter IXX, the Lord speaks to us of His divine plan, saying…(partial), 2020-2021,engraved plexiglass, 60×60×3cm. Courtesy of the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
6. John Akomfrah, The Airport (Film still), 2016, three channel HD colour video installation, 7.1 sound, 53 minutes.© Smoking Dogs Films; Courtesy of Smoking Dogs Films and Lisson Gallery.
7. Olafur Eliasson, Compass family, 2013, Stainless steel, wood, magnets, paint, 61×30cm, 193×50.5cm, 90cm in diameter. Courtesy of the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
8. Rebecca Horn, excerpts from Performances 2: Pencil Mask, 1972, film still from Performances II, 16mm film transferred to video, colour, sound. Courtesy of the artist. © Archive Rebecca Horn.
9. Chu Hao Pei and Lee Chang Ming, Beneath the Bodhi and Banyan (partial), 2018, mixed mediums (expired film stocks, digital prints, acrylic and aluminium boards, documents), dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.