Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Jury’s Comments for the Grand Prize Winner

By combining Taiwanese funeral ceremony, architectural form, the “house” for the spirit of the deceased made by paper craftsmanship, and theatrical text, the work elegantly crosses the boundaries between documentary, performing art, and movie genres in the way of storytelling. The “house” embodies the unfulfilled desires in this life. The artist opens the door to new possibilities for alternative thinking for theatricality within the context of visual art. The narrator is sometimes humorous, sometimes sentimental; his voice controls the emotion presented in this “Drama of Death”. The modest narration without providing psychological analysis effectively imprints the story in the memory of the audience. The artist delicately implicated the disrupted colonized history of Taiwan and the uncertainty about the nation’s future. It is an awakening metaphor about the passage from the life and death of human beings to the life and death of a nation.

Jury’s Comments for the Annual Shortlist Award

Su’s masterful skills interweave real-world and imaginary characters, turning the increasingly vulgar ceremonies for funerals in Taiwan into an innovation of artistic language through interdisciplinary media and cultural thinking, which co-construct a journey to the underworld with classical Taiwanese language. By comparing the realms of the living and the dead, Hua-Shan-Qiang gives a new perspective of the history, politics and culture of the colonized Taiwan with videos, installations, and folk paper crafts, and opens up a window of dialogue with global arts for Taiwan’s contemporary art. 

Comments on the Finalist

“Hua-shan-qiang” discourses social issues of Taiwan; through professional intervention of art, the issues are made intricate, contemporary, and urbanized; taboos are also laid on the table. This action allows viewers to relax and admire the “paper house”, which has a very limited life cycle. Artist’s professional maneuver turns “Hua-shang-qian” into an extremely entertaining work. Admire artworks, share the artist’s viewpoints, and be entertained. What a pleasant experience! (Commentator/ LI Jiun-Shyan)

Artwork Introduction

Hua-Shan-Qiang applies existing mediums (sculpture, photograph, video) to the traditional culture of paper offerings to create a combination of form and symbolism in which the two serve to complement one another. The new work Hua-Shan-Qiang centers around the story of a man who died in the act of self-immolation, who enters the underworld as a spirit. In accordance with traditional custom, he arrives at a house made of a paper offering and ascends to overlook all of his fortunes. In the process, his spirit passes through the vestiges of the Ming Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty, the Dutch occupation, the Spanish occupation, the Japanese occupation, Kuomintang, and capitalist colonialism.

By comparing the realms of the living and the dead, Hua-Shan-Qiang offers a new perspective on the history, politics, and culture of Taiwan's colonial history through video, installation art, and folk paper craft, opening up the window for global artistic dialogue for Taiwanese contemporary art.

About the Artist

Born in 1982 in Tainan and was educated at the Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts at Tainan National University of the Arts. In 2007, he was awarded the S-An Arts Award, the Kaohsiung Award, and the Taipei Arts Award's first prize. In 2008, his works were featured in a solo exhibition at the Gwangju Museum of Art in South Korea. He has curated exhibitions including COQ-Young Taiwanese Artists from Nobody Collection. His works were presented as part of The Heard and the Unheard: Soundscape Taiwan at the Taiwan Pavillion at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011.