Lu Mu-jen (呂沐芢) and Chiao Sheng-wei (焦聖偉) are childhood best friends and artists who are out of this world. Their collection of artwork depicting various alien, plant and animal life forms intertwined inside UFO-shaped single-celled organisms is currently on display at Frees Art Space (福利社) in Taipei’s Zhongshan District (中山).
When asked if they believe in aliens, both artists responded in the positive with blank looks on their faces which read, why is this question even being asked? Lu has never seen an alien in real life, but Chiao says he’s seen something that looked like a UFO when he was at graduate school in Greater Tainan. Despite their different experiences though, both artists steadfastly believe that life on other planets exist and use this as inspiration for their newest collection, the Euglena Program of Art.
COMMUNICATION IS KEY
Photo Courtesy of Association of the Visual Arts in Taiwan
The artists were putting the finishing touches on their latest addition to the collection, dabbing paint on their canvas in near-perfect sync as photographers snapped away and reporters scribbled in their notepads. Lu and Chiao never discuss what to paint beforehand. Their style is impromptu and organic — they simply pick up their brushes and see where the painting takes them.
“It’s like we are having a conversation with each other but with brush strokes, not words, and it’s exciting not knowing what the next brush stroke or what the end result will be” Lu said.
Communication is one of the key messages in their artwork. Within the earth itself there are numerous modes of communication, many of which are not discernible to the human eye or ear.
Photo Courtesy of Association of the Visual Arts in Taiwan
“Take dolphins for instance,” Lu said, referring to the dolphins in many of their paintings. “They are highly intelligent creatures who communicate through their sonar abilities.”
Lu and Chiao’s logic is that just because humans cannot see, hear, touch, taste or feel something does not mean that it does not exist. Naturally, this logic extends to aliens and life on other planets — perhaps other-worldly creatures use other means of communication, and they have been trying to reach out to us, but we simply cannot detect their message.
The Euglena Program of Art is essentially Lu and Chiao projecting this logic onto canvas. As Chiao says, “no one can yet prove the existence of aliens, so we feel like we have to express it through art instead.”
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
OTHER-WORLDLY BUT DOWN-TO-EARTH
From afar, the Euglena Project of Art resembles colorful UFO heads. Up close, it’s more of a mish-mash of animals, organisms and elements thrown together — dolphins that swim upstream, cats that smoke cigars and aliens that sprout eagle-like wings. And yet — maybe it’s the random smiley faces interspersed throughout almost every painting — it just seems like everything is coexisting in perfect harmony, or at least, the different elements are trying to understand each other.
“We draw such animals and aliens altogether because they are all very smart creatures,” Lu said.
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
He adds that he and Chiao both grew up loving the abundance of nature in Taiwan and watching all sorts of television shows and movies. As a result, their art has been influenced by four main tenets: aliens, nature, environmental issues and human beings like Bruce Lee (李小龍) or Michael Jackson who have changed the world in a positive way.
“Such a combination is not possible in real life, but in art, it’s possible,” Chiao says, “therefore, our paintings represent a type of hope.”
Just as there is no definitive answer to the question “do aliens exist?”, there is no definitive meaning behind Lu and Chiao’s paintings. Lu says that the paintings show how “aliens are trying to teach us peaceful messages like mutual understanding and how to preserve the environment.”
Chiao says that to him, the most important message is “a feeling of harmony.”
Likewise, each individual will have his or her own interpretation, although Lu and Chiao say that they hope their artwork will evoke happy feelings in their viewers since they were largely inspired by elements and experiences which made them happy.
So, while Lu and Chiao may seem out of this world, their desire for peaceful coexistence amongst the various elements of worldly and other-worldly life forms is rather endearing and down-to-earth.
Stephen King, the famed horror writer, once observed that post-apocalypse novels are essentially impossible. Nuclear plants would melt if human civilization disappeared, while chemical plants and pipelines and other infrastructure would poison the earth. Organized life would be impossible. Could it happen here? This year the Taiwan Climate Change Projection Information and Adaptation Knowledge Platform (TCCIP), which is supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, produced its 10-year assessment of local climate research: The Taiwan Climate Change Projection Information and Adaptation Knowledge Platform: A Decade of Climate Research. The platform and numerous climate-related policies were spurred by the disastrous typhoon
Even though Daniel Pearl World Music Day is held in hundreds of countries, the late journalist’s father Judea Pearl remembered to give a shout out to Taiwan. “Don’t be intimidated by military exercises and other dark clouds over Taiwan,” he tweeted last week. “If you find yourself strolling in Taipei on October 1, drop in to enjoy some good music and press freedom.” Now in its 21st year, the nation was among the first to hold the event to commemorate the life of Daniel Pearl, who was abducted and killed by terrorists in 2002 while working for the Wall Street Journal
Of all the cities in Taiwan few have undergone such a major transformation as Kaohsiung and there is no better place to witness this than on Chijin Island (旗津). From gritty to groovy, Chijin is an oasis just 30 minutes from central Kaohsiung. The reopening of the Chihou Lighthouse (旗後砲臺) this month, after substantial renovation, is just the latest attraction. In the 1990’s Chijin would have been best described as the armpit of the city. A quirky docklands area that I would visit from time to time, after spending a few hours there I would wonder why I bothered. Even
Danny Wen (溫士凱) had an eye-opening homecoming experience. First it was the township chief who went to school with his uncle. Then it was the trail builder who knew his mother. There was even a connection with an indigenous Saisiyat elder, who spoke Wen’s Hakka dialect fluently and once stayed at his grandfather’s hotel in Hsinchu County’s Jhudong Township (竹東). “That hotel closed in the 1970s and I can’t even find old photos of it,” Wen says. “I felt goosebumps all over when he told me that.” The travel writer and television host didn’t expect his journey through the 270km
RSS