TSAI Hai-Ru
How Are You?
- 2014, single-channel video,16 min 31 sec.
- Courtesy of the artist.
Curatorial Perspective
Within the limited physical body, no matter the terms that are incorporated, any will to live, pain, goal, or desire circulates between two seemingly contradictory dynamic states: “sand tower building” and “fly ash annihilation,” meaning accumulation and destruction. The starting point of Tsai Hai-Ru’s work comprises her own multifaceted experiences as a woman and her identity as a family member of White Terror victims. Her work brings together decades of repression and restraint in the process of self-growth, as well as the enduring question of how to achieve a rebirth and transformation from these experiences. In this edition of the Taiwan Biennial, Tsai applies delicate, slow-paced, and complex handwork to manifest a sense of life and power unto tree barks. On common tree trunks, from nodes where buds originate to branching twigs that have been cut off, one can see injuries suffered by trees during growth. By beating and extending the tree barks, Tsai renders these wounds even larger and vividly visible. Throughout the time- and labor-consuming act of beating, the artist must remain calm, while releasing inexpressible anger to convert the issue of transitional justice in human history with the energy of her life into a metaphor for a rebirth from devastating traumas. The processes of “accumulation” and “devastation” in relation to trauma and the journey of life also reveal the intertwining and entangling relations of body, technics, and nation through the intimate artistic language of collaging organic and inorganic materials. The exhibition of the work does not mean to represent personal experiences of trauma. Instead, it is a technical extension of the artist’s life in the form of the artwork through the mechanisms, both the visible and invisible ones, in the context of the museum—it is a way of combining the continuation, coexistence, and mutual growth of the human and the non-human life, and therein lies the possibility and persistence of survival.
Creation Description
Within the limited physical body, no matter the terms that are incorporated, any will to live, pain, goal, or desire circulates between two seemingly contradictory dynamic states: “sand tower building” and “fly ash annihilation,” meaning accumulation and destruction. Juxtaposed with recordings of conversations with the children of victims of Taiwan’s White Terror period are organism-like crocheted works, curtains made from bubble wrap, and collages produced from raw materials for paper and tree bark. These highly varied but ordinary materials respond to and run through one another, directing the need to work hard to live out every moment.
Work
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How Are You?2014, single-channel video,16 min 31 sec. Courtesy of the artist.
Artist Bio
Tsai Hai-Ru , born and currently based in Taipei, and she published a collection of her works in 2020, Women talk Martial Arts (女口武林) covering over thirty years of experience in artistic creation and exhibitions. She was the founder of Haitong Art Centre and one of the founding members of Shin Len Yuan Art Space and the Taiwan Women's Art Association, as well as was actively involved in the field of art and multi-media design, human resources education and training.
Her artistic practice revolves around her roles as a female and her perceptions of autonomy, doubts, dilemmas and self-healing at different stages of her life, exploring the existence of art and life through the forms of body, space, images, objects and other installations.
After becoming a mother in 2003, Tsai’s practice has transformed to be a more complex form that connects social domains and has invited the participation of other women in an attempt to clarify and address the curiosity and injustice of women as mothers, daughters and social caregivers. In 2008, she began examining historical recounts of various scales related to her father and her family, and it was only after 2013 that she was able to use art as a pretext to process her family’s connection and historical memories with the period of White Terror in Taiwan. She also curated an exhibition in which daughters of the White Terror victims were invited to embrace and confront their upbringing together. In 2019, her installation work Flower of Life and CLEAN Project which were part of the exhibition “A Jail Beyond the Prison Walls” (untold stories by female family members of White Terror victims) presented at the National Human Rights Museum (Green Island Park and Jingmei Park). The exhibition “Unload the Secret” were at the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei.