Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Jury’s Comments for the Annual Shortlist Award Winner

The Records of the Hongmaogang Village Relocation in Kaohsiung is the most time-consuming, largest in scale, most costly community relocation effort in Taiwan’s history, and reflects the drastic social changes that have occurred in Taiwan in the last half-century. CHEN, Po-I has long been concerned with this issue. The work Home: Records of the Hongmaogang Village Relocation was created by conducting fieldwork. Thematically, his photographs focus on the “household” as a unit rather than on “individual” subjects; for instance, the houses and debris dug out by excavators. In his choice of form, he applies lighting techniques to capture every detail of the ruins, and flattens the close shot (the interior of the ruins) with the long shot (land being developed) into one plane of vision, etc., to exceed the limits of documentary coverage and establish a unique wasteland aesthetic. In the forgotten settlement of Hongmaogang, CHEN Po-I seeks out the light in Hongmaogang’s darkness through exposition and dialectics. 

Comments on the Finalist

CHEN Po-I’s nickname, “B.B.” is a reference to his penchant for issuing warnings, like a police whistle. His innate “keep alert” personality has sensitized him to his environment. Any wind of change attracts his attention. At any major event, such as the relocation of Hongmaogang Village, CHEN Po-I would arrive at the scene, camera in hand, to capture all various sundry details with his skillful photographic techniques. His rigorous and self-disciplined artistic training has made CHEN Po-I adept in manipulating light. When there is “light”, life exists. CHEN Po-I’s works are characterized by their rousing clarity and luminosity, as well as by their narrative details. The impassioned pursuit of “light” is at the persistent core that drives CHEN Po-I’s body of work. “Light” as narrative and “light” in a dialectical world, this pervasive light also encompasses his work in “Hongmaogang”. (Commentator / LEE Jiun-Shyan)

Artwork Introduction

Apart from the damage done by natural disasters, another cause for relocation in Taiwan would be due to the projects related to national economic development. This type of relocation is usually deemed as a sacrifice of personal value for the greater good of the majority. However, when this type of thinking has become the rationale of the people that carry out the projects, they overlook the cultural and historical value formed throughout the centuries and of the people whose lives have drastically changed due to the projects.

This photographic project of Hongmaogang aimed to document the historic and cultural landscape of this community through those demolished homes. Taking each home as a unit, artist photographed the things left behind in the houses, the traces on the walls, and the views outside the windows. Chen Po-I had a couple of ideas about this project. The first was to think about the value of home. Through photography, he revealed the living environment of the households in the fishing village since the exclusion regulation was announced forty years ago, hoping to capture the progress of time in the presence (remains) and absence (traces). Secondly, by collecting the remnants, he conjured up stories about the users of these objects, creating a narrative that connected photos, which have been used to “remind people of past events,” and the things left behind, which “evoked nostalgic feelings when looked upon.” It also reflected my affections for home in this work. Although these homes were sacrificed for national economic development, the entangled feelings have also formed a critical force. Chen Po-I tried to combine the collapsed houses and the exterior industrial landscape. With the help of photographic lighting, the views outside the houses seemed to be flatly pasted onto the windows, turning these “window views” into photos that were simultaneously realistic and surreal, echoing the absurdity and contradictions in this relocation.

About the Artist

Born in 1972 in Chiayi, CHEN Po-I has been actively engaged in photography education and works as an exhibition curator under his professional specialty of photography and ocean engineering. Some series of his photographic works now have become part of the permanent collections of National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (Taiwan); Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (Taiwan); Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Japan), and his works are also collected by private collectors. Chen is currently a PhD candidate at the Department of Hydraulic and Ocean Engineering at NCKU. In 2013, his photographic work Morakot Nansha-lu depicting the typhoon disaster area had won a nomination for the top fifteen productions in the 12th Taishin Arts Award.