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The Introduction of Taiwan`s Contemporary Art.Vol, 4 : Yao Jui-chung solo exhibition


DURATION: 1998-08-25 ~ 1998-09-26
OPENING: 1998-08-25
VENUE: MOMA Contemporary, Japan

Three Travels Looking For Identity: The Last Chapter Yao Jui-Chung -- “World Is For All” By Mio Iwakiri In his eyes, there are always two opposite feelings; seriousness, with a kind of fury and cheer, retelling stupid jokes. One could call this series of his works, “the record of travels looking for identity”, which started as “Territory Take Over” in 1994. That year Yao Jui-chung pissed at various points in Taiwan for the first series of “Territory Take Over”. It was the marking of historical sites, which are concerned with occupations by Holland, the Ching rule, Japan etc. In repeating these animal-like actions, he got an intuitive answer, he is not ‘Taiwanese”, and moreover there were no ‘Taiwanese’, as they have their own names. Who is he then, if he cannot be ‘Taiwanese’ although he’s grown up here, in Taiwan? Carrying the question, he traveled to the mainland, where his father was born. But he ended up feeling a foreigner there as well. IN his “Recover Mainland China”(1996), which he made during the trip, he cynically drew on the KMT’s ever unachievable goal to recover the mainland. He always stands alone with his stiffened body. The feet are floating above the ground. The photographs seem to be montages, but actually they are taken very at the moment of jumping. The jump in the processes of this work is symbolic. Jump into somewhere new. But a moment later, of course he lands at the same point in vain. It can be seen as overlapping with his going back to the issue of identity over and over again. Two years later, he showed “World is for All”, the final part of the series. In front of Chinatowns all over the world, a man stands holding his arms up at the gate. Who is his act for? The eyes are of police, of powers, or of the ‘owners’ of the site. He is never asked his identity there. No one care where the residents of the Chinatown are originally from, no whether he is from the place or not. Before the gaze, any of those differences are just ignored. Forced to belong to the group named ‘Chinese’, while he has bee, feeling the difficulty in identifying himself with some community. Once he is connected with the stereotyped images such as never talking the land’s languages, dirty, illegal residences, Mafia, people can hardly get out of it. How could he resist the gaze with power from the outside? With its sudden violent horror, He has no choice besides keeping surrendering, holding his arms up again and again. In this series, how ever, there is a picture obviously different from the others. It is a shot in front of the Chaing-Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. Here he is not alone, but standing with many ‘foreigners’ and all of them holding their arms up and smiling. This picture appears in the-book “100reasons to live in Taiwan”, (1998) edited by young creators such as Yao, which has broadly caught on among Taiwan’s. The Hall is explained as a huge weird temple ensuring Chaing-Kai- Shek as a god and is placed in the middle of Taipei City. It is supposed to be a spiritual axis for Taiwanese people and was built for that purpose, but they feel awkward with its existence. Could people can hardly adore a government and its leader in only 50 years or so from their heart of hearts. Maybe the fact that this spring the long period of the KMT’s dictatorship finished and was replaced with the DPP, many of who’s members had advocated Taiwan’s independence, is proof of the impossibility. Yao deals with the issue of “the gaze from the other” which no one can avoid in this “World is for All”. Also he presents his hope for an emergence of “a new shape of ego” here in Taiwan with the piece of the Chaing-Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. Instead of shutting of Chinese communities, people could be broader. In Taiwan, where already so many different cultures are accepted, mostly by could be broader. In Taiwan, where already so many different cultures are accepted, mostly by colonization, people from various cultures have countless shapes of identities. Someday they will be able to dodge themselves from the gaze of others with a cheerful smile. After six years, that is where Yao’s travel ended up, with this vision for the present.