Dates｜2020. 12. 19 - 2021. 01. 31
Reception｜2020. 12. 19 （Sat.） 16:00
Venue｜galerie nichido Taipei
Kazuya Sakamoto
Ying-Ting Chen
Yi-Chun Lo
Plants are tightly connected to our everyday life. Their presence has been a constant feature against the backdrop of history, indispensable to our own existence. People are somehow left at the mercy of plants, and nature in general: the wealth they produce has, at times, triggered wars, at others, it has played a role in the making of world powers. Furthermore, casting an eye, for instance, on the recent extreme climate events, and air pollution issues, it seems we are entering a crucial phase where the current state of the human impact on the natural environment is put under scrutiny. Oddly enough, as a consequence of the new coronavirus pandemic, many countries have declared a state of emergency and news of temporary improvements in air quality following the impacts of movement restrictions has been reported, and in this with/post-corona era we find ourselves living in, demands for more aggressive responses are growing stronger. Through fieldwork and out of their mutual interest in and fascination with plants, the three artists on view are turning their attention to those aspects that are intangible to people focusing, for instance, on the history of plants and their relation with humans. Through this exhibition, they investigate people’s journey in relation to their surrounding environment over time, each crossing different eras and lands, whilst centering their research on a present time where history has been put to the test, and give voice to their unique perspective and expressive language.
Ying-Ting Chen (1985 -) creates a parallelism between life and a journey and, becoming herself the traveler, tries to represent the endless flow of time digging into her everyday life and personal experiences, while going back and forth between past and present. In particular, Chen widely relies on the use of fabric as media for her work since, as the artist explains, it is an important material when it comes to convey the meaning of someone’s existence, evoking memories from the past. On view in this exhibition it is a body of work realized through the use of bagasse and paper obtained from strained lees of sugarcane. A variety of wild species of sugarcane have been naturally growing in Taiwan and, before the war, sugar production represented a significant business with sugarcane being the main agricultural product. Chen is recreating a bagasse-made version of part of the sugar mill equipment she saw during a visit to a sugar factory that was used in the good old days. Through her work, Chen brings back to life different stories and historical events offering an insight into Taiwan’s sugar production at that time and at the related labor condition.
Yi-Chun Lo (1985 -) investigates the relation between people and nature and their history through fieldwork that allows her to get in contact with different local communities. Her wide-ranging practice stretches from drawings to large-scale installations and is especially characterized by the use of natural media, such as banana peels and tobacco leaves. On view in this exhibition, the artist’s new series of work focuses on sugarcane. Daily necessities such as white sugar and cane sugar are produced from sugarcane but the list goes on and nowadays it includes a type of aviation fuel obtained through a sugarcane-based ethanol production. Sugar factories have undergone big changes adjusting their production so as to meet the needs of the time, and reflect its new lifestyle trends and benefits. Through the creation of munitions and training goods, such as those regularly used to keep fit and healthy, as bagasse-made sculptures, Lo sends a wake-up call to warn us about human societies where the pursuit of self-interest has become the main driving force.
Growing waterweeds inside water-tanks out of passion, Kazuya Sakamoto (1985 -) has learnt of the similarities such ecosystems share with the fabric of society today, and, choosing plants as the motif of his work, he has been engaged ever since in an effort to represent the inner side of things. In his recent work, Sakamoto has been studying types of waterweeds that can grow without sunlight, and species of wildflowers that live and breed thanks to a differently timed life cycle that keeps them safe from the attacks of other plants. The variety of species minutely represented, multiplying and breeding on the canvas, seem to be a metaphor of the constant changes required of life to thrive, and we find ourselves wonder whether this is the very resilience we all need in these pandemic times.
