a portrait of taiwan, perth, 2018
Curated by Ashley Yihsin Chang, this project was designed to create proactive participation and dialogue between the Perth Taiwanese community and the diversity of local arts and culture in Perth. The aim was to foster cultural understanding, respect, and integration, and provide an opportunity to enhance each other’s knowledge about art, culture, and history in Western Australia, as well as sharing new skills through art workshops. Involving 22 Taiwanese Australian women and 22 Western Australian female artists, the project culminated in a portrait exhibition and Antipodean Encounters in 2018.
Working on this project and meeting the women involved led me to explore my own fractured links to a past family and country, with the sense of dislocation and of being the “other” that family separation and migration can induce.
Cobbling together an assemblage of parts of old furniture with an unknown history, the sculpture After All These Years Still I Yearn, creates new and unexpected connections that also feel a little unbalanced and unstable. This shrine of sorts feels not quite fit for purpose and helps us examine the precarious relationship between ourselves, our pasts, and the tensions around permanence in our new lives.
After All These Years Still I Yearn (installation view) | 2018 | timber, found objects, gold leaf, incense ash | 160 cm x 60 cm x 90 cm | Photograph courtesy of Eva Fernandez
After All These Years Still I Yearn | 2018; timber, found objects, gold leaf, incense ash | 160 cm x 60 cm x 90 cm | Photograph courtesy of Gregor Hart
Untitled | 2018 | digital image
