Artists
Photo Credit: NIU Chun-Chiang
YU Wen-Fu
YU Wen-Fu
| Location | France / Paris |
|---|---|
| Residency | Cité Internationale des Arts |
| Year of the Grant | 2008 |
| Work | After Here (solo exhibition), Variances of Kelp (solo exhibition) |
Artist Statement: Chasing Natural Awareness in Foreign Lands:
I utilize specific materials to present the natural or artificial phenomenon that is easily neglected and not easily felt. In this project, I search for these often overlooked phenomenons with an alert and sensitive attitude like an animal entering an unfamiliar territory. I create from personal experience and perception in unknown environments.
Using materials of my own choosing, I look for the aura in the atmosphere of new surroundings. I explore, capture, and experience the invisible yet present relationships between nature, people, foreign spaces, and myself.
This project was realized during my residencies at Salamanca Arts Centre, Tasmania and King Island Cultural Centre, King Island through Asialink Australia. It was the first time that an international artist was invited to participate in these Artist-in-Residency programs. Both locations were relatively close to the ocean.
For a long time, I had been living in the town of Jushan in Nantou, the only county on the island of Taiwan that does not border the ocean. In Australia, the rhythmic sound of the tides became one with my heartbeat and breath, and the call of the seagulls turned into the running thoughts of the atmosphere. I spent the majority of my time there alone watching the sea in silence or watching somewhere farther away.
There was an abundance of apples in Tasmania (though they are not indigenous to the land). I used apples and reeds to represent the space-time distortion that altered the island’s history, culture, and economy after the invasion of various ‘foreign species.’ The exhibition location that I chose is where whales were slaughtered in the past.
On King Island, I used the transformation of kelp to illustrate the unique characters of the island’s species nurtured in its unique climate and natural environment.
When creating these two exhibitions at Tasmania and King Island, I abandoned the materials and working method that I typically utilized. At the same time, however, I maintained my central belief of concern for the natural environment. Producing work in a foreign place allowed me to alter the artistic process that I utilized in my own country. It inspired new ways of thinking.