In the book Postwar Political History of Taiwan, Wakabayashi Masahiro proposed a question that if China had fired missiles over Taiwan island, what the situation would be today? Fortunately, it never happened like this. Missiles were never fired over the tropical sky but only sent off the ports Keelung and Kaohsiung.

Storyline, Installation, 100x700cm, 2015

Storyline, Installation, 100x700cm, 2015, detail

Refraction

The hypothesis and the legend inspired the artist’s use of narrative in the work Refraction. The artist collected clues and discovered Dao’s myth about Book of Genesis in Orchid Island and the fictional geology of two floods (including stories like the Book of Genesis in the Bible, great ancient flood’s occurrence before Genesis flood.) With the finding, the artist start a visual study of fictional archeology. If a global craze for tourism and cosmopolitanism create the legend of auroras, promoting auroras, which only seen in a clear sky, in a country for frequent cloudy weather aims to create a collective memory of consumerism. Refraction did the other way around. In search for light myth in Orchid Island, the work tried to understand the invisible but existing process of “Refracting” in between Taiwan and Orchid Island- a process of heterogeneity and assimilation of identity and subjectification.

CGI: CHIU Chui-Yu

Special Thanks to Kurt CHOU Chia-Hui

Refraction, 2015, Video Installation, filmstill

Refraction, 2015, Video Installation, Dimension Variable. ( photo by Gert Jan van Rooij)

Refraction, 2015 (excerpt)

Refraction, 2015, Video Installation

A collection of future islands, 2015, Installation

A collection of future islands, 2015, Installation (detail)