Here’s a teaser: A stranger sends you an e-mail telling you he wants to take pictures of your children as a part of an art project. When he shows up at your door, he informs you that he wants to photograph your children in their bedrooms, under their beds or in their closets. Would you invite him in?
Tseng Yu-chin (曾御欽) assumed that parents would answer in the affirmative. The 33-year-old artist had just arrived in New York for a six-month residency at Location One, a non-profit gallery and residency space similar to the Taipei Artist Village.
“I was thinking that my project would be finished in a month or two,” he said.
Boy, did he get that one wrong. “Some people shot me down when they saw me. Others just slammed the door in my face,” he said.
Not really the kind of experiences one writes home about. Yet in an age in which child pornography and abductions are constantly making headlines, it is hardly surprising that New Yorkers were wary of letting Tseng into their homes, even though he invited parents to supervise the photo shoots.
(Interestingly enough, statistics from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services show that cases of missing children have decreased significantly over the past decade.)
These and other misunderstandings have changed Tseng and his art. Hide and Seek, a must-see exhibit of six light-box installations currently displayed at the Nou Gallery (新畫廊), continues his exploration of childhood, though with a more sardonic tone than his earlier work.
Tseng’s work has always tiptoed along that thin line separating what is taboo and what is acceptable. His viewers’ reactions to his work illustrate just how thin that line can be. Take his 2005 It’s Not So Bad for example. It shows two young boys dressed only in white shorts frolicking behind a bush. Many interpreted the slide projection as a portrayal of forbidden love.
Or his series of videos Who is Listening. One video depicts a young boy clad only in white underpants climbing over, kissing and burrowing his head into the crotch of a woman (presumably his mother), while phrases such as “you smell so good,” “you can’t kick me or else I’ll bleed” and “kiss my boobies” flash across the bottom of the screen. Is the video a playful depiction of family bliss or the early stirrings of an Oedipal complex?
Another video in the same series focuses on the innocent faces of children. Suddenly, a stream of yogurt is shot on to their faces. In separate frames, each child is shown reacting with surprise and often laughter. Is this a celebration of a novel experience or the dark fantasy of some sexual predator? (The videos can be found on YouTube). “When I showed it in college, the professor and my classmates [asked]: Do you love children?” Tseng said. “Of course I said no. I [use] children because they are pure ... White is a symbol of that purity. This question has been haunting me for 10 years.”
Clearly, the reaction of his peers and teachers has left a sour taste in Tseng’s mouth. And so the color white, Tseng’s emblem for youthful purity has, in this particular series, turned to black.
Hide and Seek emerged from more immediate experiences in New York. While riding the subway on his first day there, he accidentally bumped into a man standing beside him. “Fuck,” the man bellowed menacingly.
“I just wanted to hide. I didn’t want to leave my apartment,” Tseng said. Upon further reflection, he realized he could portray his own anguish through the imaginary world of children. Although his contact at Location One strongly advised him against attempting the project, he persevered and eventually found parents willing to go along with it.
The images are arranged in broken triptychs, which are affixed to the front of wooden light boxes stacked on the gallery floor. Though fragmented, the photos are linked by a clear narrative thread: The first frame captures the bedroom, the focal point being a boy tucked away in a closet or a girl hiding under a bed. The second photo is a close-up of the child in his or her hiding place. The third is taken from the child’s perspective, effectively turning the children into complicit actors in an unfolding drama that the viewer must interpret.
Rendered in saturated colors and “repainted” in black, the pieces provide a sense of dread, as though the children are hiding from an unseen bogeyman — an echo, perhaps, of the day Tseng escaped from the threatening man on the subway.
As with his previous work, these images are considerably detailed. The messiness of a boy’s room or a girl clutching a doll allude to the child’s personality and by extension his or her family. All aspects of the visual experience are manipulated, both through the angles of the shots and the arrangements of the lighting, so that everything is left open to interpretation.
During our interview, Tseng was guarded about his work — similar, perhaps, to the way parents have become more protective of their children. The public’s reaction to Tseng’s innocent portrayal of children shattered the sacred image he held of pre-adolescence.
“I think that when people grow up
they become dirty. You can’t see purer
or simpler things. It is really depressing,” he said.
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