I am always wary of people trying to make overlarge statements, and this is what Malaysian-Chinese artist H.H. Lim
One of the first warning signs that Lim's trying to say too much comes in an essay that explains the installation for those who don't "get it," which I'd assume is just about everybody. It says that through this show, Lim intends to "present his views on the world change for the latest year," which included a number of "drastic events, such as New York's 911 tragedy, [the] Israeli war, [the] EU's impact on economics, and natural disasters brought by global climate changes."
A couple of logical nonsequiturs follow, like that since these are problems that "we can only `see' but cannot `speak,'" sign language will be used to specially "interpret" these events (this is a fallacy because sign language expresses thoughts just as any other language does).
To make a quick note of what Lim has done for the exhibition: he has painted the gallery's walls burgundy and on top of that ground has traced textbook style illustrations of generic figures performing sign language in thin, white outlines. There are also several plaques, some picture-sized and hanging on the wall and two two-meters tall and leaning against it. The plaques are embossed with words -- some English and some Italian -- that are printed in reverse so that they could be viewed properly with a mirror.
In all of this language play, Lim seems to be batting at concepts -- much like a blindfolded person bats at a pinata -- from that tirelessly trendy body of thought, post-structural French literary criticism. Specifically, he's bobbling with a paradox of language that goes: the ultimate goal of language is to communicate, but unfortunately, language is an ultimately imperfect tool for communication. So -- and this is what I think he's trying to say -- we have seen a year of extraordinary and calamitous change, but the events themselves were ineffable, and no language we have can adequately express what it means to have seen or experienced them.
But to express that, what he does is put a line drawing of a tank on a wall to represent all the tragedy in all of last year's wars. It is nothing less than incredibly and grossly inadequate. So is juxtaposing against the tank a plaque bearing the word "vedere" (Italian for "to see") and a diagram of how to make the equivalent sign in sign language, all of which is supposed to tell you that seeing these events is the only way of truly understanding them. Basically, it looks like Lim has some big ideas, but he doesn't know how to get them across. So in the end Speechless doesn't say much.
IT Park is located at 2F, 41 Yitung St., Taipei. The exhibit runs through Sept. 28.
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