A 4m-high pile of hay suddenly bursts into flames. At first glance, the video seems part of a typical farming scene, with people stomping the rice hay into a cylindrical dome after the harvest. Yet, the hay is used for tinder throughout the year and is never burned all at once. So, burning the stack like a bonfire, then becomes the artist's iconoclastic metaphor for destroying "the Father."
The antagonistic father-son theme is further illustrated with close-up shots of a farmer fiercely paddling the loose ends of hay into shape.
This is one of the many haunting images in Lin Chuan-chu's (
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Straddling the worlds of traditional ink painting and contemporary interdisciplinary works, Lin successfully merges disparate cultural styles to tell an incredibly personal and moving story of trauma, conflict, familial obligation and ultimately love.
The solo exhibition is divided into two sections, called "Mother" and "Father," and includes photographs, a video of a performance, hand-drawn animations, ink paintings, sculpture and narrative writing.
It is not often that an art exhibition includes the artist's writings. Lin's writings lend a powerful emotional charge to his work, so that the viewer is struck by the power of the words and images.
For instance: "When Father ran out of the house in such a rage, I knew that something was going to happen. He heard that his eldest son was in a nearby farmer's house gambling his fortune away."
The ink painting Lunch Box tells a confessional tragic tale. A huge rectangular box slightly out of perspective looms out at the viewer. The box is filled with rice. However, it is painted loosely and conjures up other disturbing images such as a coffin, bed, tomb, etc. A text on the wall explains that when the elder brother left the family to pursue his life, the father ordered the mother to cook only plain rice on that day annually to commemorate the family tragedy.
Artistically, Lin combines the traditional and refined Chinese brushstroke style with a looser way of painting. In this way, he bravely tries to reconfigure the meaning of traditional ink painting.
The Bed refers to the time the artist was catheterizing his elderly infirm mother: "Being old and sick is so sad; it forces Mother to be naked in front of me. It took away her privacy and hurt our dignity."
The animation Typhoon starts off with the top on a pile of rice blowing away. Later on, it is sowing time, and a farmer's sweat hydrates the rice, which then grows. The animation is created as an ink painting first, then Lin cuts the paper shapes to create movement.
The small grain of rice becomes a powerful symbol for Lin who grew up on a farm with eight siblings. In one photo, Birth, he is hown emerging out of a pile of rice as if he has just hatched. The flat white background makes the photo look like one of his painted scrolls.
Such images are heart wrenching, but like the best literary novel, the works have a way of echoing your own heart, allowing you to think about your own family scars, and as Lin shows, family tragedy, illness and death are universal themes.
The unexpected collapse of the recall campaigns is being viewed through many lenses, most of them skewed and self-absorbed. The international media unsurprisingly focuses on what they perceive as the message that Taiwanese voters were sending in the failure of the mass recall, especially to China, the US and to friendly Western nations. This made some sense prior to early last month. One of the main arguments used by recall campaigners for recalling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers was that they were too pro-China, and by extension not to be trusted with defending the nation. Also by extension, that argument could be
Aug. 4 to Aug. 10 When Coca-Cola finally pushed its way into Taiwan’s market in 1968, it allegedly vowed to wipe out its major domestic rival Hey Song within five years. But Hey Song, which began as a manual operation in a family cow shed in 1925, had proven its resilience, surviving numerous setbacks — including the loss of autonomy and nearly all its assets due to the Japanese colonial government’s wartime economic policy. By the 1960s, Hey Song had risen to the top of Taiwan’s beverage industry. This success was driven not only by president Chang Wen-chi’s
Last week, on the heels of the recall election that turned out so badly for Taiwan, came the news that US President Donald Trump had blocked the transit of President William Lai (賴清德) through the US on his way to Latin America. A few days later the international media reported that in June a scheduled visit by Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) for high level meetings was canceled by the US after China’s President Xi Jinping (習近平) asked Trump to curb US engagement with Taiwan during a June phone call. The cancellation of Lai’s transit was a gaudy
The centuries-old fiery Chinese spirit baijiu (白酒), long associated with business dinners, is being reshaped to appeal to younger generations as its makers adapt to changing times. Mostly distilled from sorghum, the clear but pungent liquor contains as much as 60 percent alcohol. It’s the usual choice for toasts of gan bei (乾杯), the Chinese expression for bottoms up, and raucous drinking games. “If you like to drink spirits and you’ve never had baijiu, it’s kind of like eating noodles but you’ve never had spaghetti,” said Jim Boyce, a Canadian writer and wine expert who founded World Baijiu Day a decade