Two years ago, Lo Sen-hao (羅森豪) climbed into the brackish waters of the Lukang River to create "Today's Fancy, Yesterday's Passion," an installation art project consisting of a lengthy bamboo bridge that stretched from the land into the river like a fashion catwalk.
Lo used the bridge as a metaphor to connect to the last few generations, trying to create a contrast between the past embracing a beautiful land and the present that is so destructive and negligent of nature. It's a project that Lo went through a great ordeal to finish.
"No one wanted to help, to get down in the water to build the bridge," he recalled. "Because the river is so smelly and filthy." So Lo did everything himself, soaking in the water for two weeks.
"You couldn't believe the fascinating scene," said Lo satirically. "I saw a TV, bicycle, refrigerator, dead pig, and a dead chicken. Everything you can imagine was down there."
That project served as an example of Lo's determination to physically locate his art within its environmental context, a style that supports his belief in art not being confined to museums or exhibition halls. "It's too suave, too vacuum, too institutionalized in the museums," he says. His work is most successful, he says, when it forms a natural partnership with the land and environment he cares about.
His concern for Nature and the deterioration of its virgin beauty finds some origin in the memories of his childhood home, a place that now can only exist in his head. "I grow up in the rural countryside of Chiayi," says Lo. "I used to drink the water from the stream and there were fish and shrimp jumping around."
Today, going back to his home only disappoints the artist. The stream is now full of garbage and waste. "We can not find our hometown anymore."
Tainted Formosa
Seven years ago, when Lo returned from his study in Germany, a country notable for its environmental protection efforts, he toured around the island from the very north tip of Leekung to tropical Hengchun. He found pollution had tainted a large part of what the Dutch called Ile Formosa - the Beautiful Island.
As part of an experiment, he used clay to create more than 10,000 fetus-like objects that he placed in rivers across the island. "Later on I discovered most of them had turned dark, blackened by the polluted water. The clay fetuses I made are like our offspring. What kind of environment are they going to grow up with?"
Although the destruction of the environment is a recurrent theme of Lo's installations, he has in the last few years incorporated societal and cultural themes into his evolving style. But, as usual, Lo does not follow the norm. He is bent on finding ways to surprise or shock his audience, in an effort to make people think critically.
Lo once turned the Chiayi train station into the presidential office three years ago, but not until after two months of negotiation with railway authorities. When he finished the facade, people in and out of the train station were intensely curious about why he bothered to do it.
"This is what I want, to overturn fixed values and standards," says Lo. "People passing by the train station have their directions clear, including me. They know where they are going to. I left my hometown from here to see the world and I know what I care about and what I want to do for my country. But what about those working in the presidential office?"
Lo infused the giant project - dubbed "Mirage" - with the melancholy acquiescence of a person who is a helpless witness to the suffering of his homeland. The installation conveyed the massive destruction of not only the environment, but also of morality and values.
Touching the earth
These days Lo spends much of his time rebuilding his newly bought home, tucked deep and high into the mountains of Yangmingshan National Park. He says it helps him touch the earth again and fulfills his dream to be close to nature.
He likes to hike everyday, beating up the mountain trails, roaming idly through the greenery. And as he moves along, the conscientious artist never forgets to pick up the litter along the way, which will become fodder for his next project and a reminder to keep Ile Formosa clean.
SURVEY OF LAND (土地調查):
This project, currently exhibiting in the lobby of the American Cultural Center until June 28, is rather small compared to his other large-scale installations carried out around the island over the years. In it, Lo uses discarded objects and garbage: broken bowls, wires, and, in particular, glass bottles of all sorts.
Lo, an expert on ceramics, uses firing techniques to soften and shape the bottles into sculpture, most of which are abstract forms of human bodies with big bellies. Garbage is stuffed into the shaped bottles to exaggerate the belly, and the mouths of the bottles yawn toward the sky.
It's a satirical scene that Lo hopes to portray: people lying drunk on their stuffed bellies after a binge, with mouths wide open and still greedy even though they are ready to throw away materials they can not consume.
In addition to "Survey of Land," Lo is also publishing a book this month, titled "The Views in Affinity." It details his ideals about life, the land and the environment as well as documents his art projects over the years and the ideas behind them.
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