Artists
Photo Credit: NIU Chun-Chiang
CHEN Szu-Han
CHEN Szu-Han
| Location | USA / New York, NY |
|---|---|
| Residency | International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) |
| Year of the Grant | 2009 |
| Work | Make a Wish (three-channel video installation/performance 40’) Then I Said “Have a Nice Day” (video documentation of performance/text 13') The Room is Too Small to Store Memory (exhibition) |
| Personal Website | CHEN Szu-Han's Personal Website |
Artist Statement:
I was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and I am currently living and working in Taiwan. I base my work around social issues and my personal experiences living in different countries. My concern lies in how people from different cultures and social classes conduct themselves in everyday life. Through observation and re-interpretation, I create in the hopes of bringing attention to social issues, and putting things in different perspectives for the audience, perhaps cultivating a somewhat poetic attitude toward reality.
My practice often involves performance and its artistic process. It sometimes requires viewers’ non-active or active participation in a situation that the artist has created. The process matters the most in my work. In addition to text and video documentation, I also employ photography to show the process and to construct a scenario. In 2009, I participated in an Artist-in-Residence at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn, New York, and later at Unitec, Auckland as an exchange artist from Taipei Artists Village (TAV), Taiwan.
Make a Wish:
The objects positioned in front of the fountain at Washington Square Park, New York City, were things abandoned on the streets that I found when strolling around the city during my four-month residency. I utilized these castaway objects as metaphors for the abandoned connection between the homeless people and the society. By repositioning these objects back in the city, I attempted to change the relationship between the objects and the city.
I granted the objects’ hopes by filling them up with water and writing ‘make a wish’ on them. I wanted people to actually throw coins into them. The three screens in my final installation showed (in 3 different angles) what had happened during my afternoon of filming in the park. The final word displayed the surrounding environment of the shoot, as well as people’s reactions.
Then I Said ‘Have a Nice Day’:
I looked for people to give flyers to randomly. I chatted with these people while folding the flyers that I received from other people into paper airplanes. I gave these airplanes to the people I chatted with and said ‘have a nice day.’
Manhattan streets were filled with consumerism. The process of an artist turning advertisements into a paper planes symbolized the transformation of ‘objects encouraging consumerism’ into ‘stuff useless for the economic growth.’ The video and texts in the documentation recorded the encounter between myself and other people who gave out flyers, and allowed the audience to see the work conditions of an artist.