Chika Matsuda：Absolute Space Artists-in-Residence Program for 2025

✧ Opening｜2025.5.10（Sat）15:00-16:00
✧ Forum｜2025.5.10 （Sat）16:00-17:30
✧ Artist｜Chika Matsuda
✧ Exhibition Date｜2025.5.10-5.25
✧ Venue｜SanHo Art Lab
✧ Address｜No. 14, Sanhe St., South Dist., Tainan City
✧ Opening Hours｜Wed to Sun 12:00-18:00

Organizer：Absolute Space AIR
Recommending Unit：Sapporo TenjinyamaArt Studio
Advisor：Ministry of Culture

【Statement】
Snake Bike
Which one is vehicle?
by Chika Matsuda

This exhibition consists of three parts. “Snake Bike”, “Peek Pole” and “Gate and the Gatekeeper at 1246 Sanhe Street”. These works are my take on what I observed in daily life in Tainan.

“Snake Bike”
I borrowed a bicycle from Blue the owner of a sophisticated café “chocolate R”. I met him at the café and he told me that he wants the city to be more cyclist friendly, and said I can use one of his bicycles if I want to make a bicycle art.

I thought about what I can do with a bicycle. There are already many master pieces of bicycle art from Duchamp to Ai Weiwei. But still, I had an image of bicycle tiers becoming snakes. I have seen snakes had been run over by tiers but not the other way around. Also I liked how mechanism of wheels and how snake’s muscle operates. Two completely different approach to mobility and transporting their bodies. I thought juxtaposition of the two will create a contrast.

I googled online and found a snake farm which is for restaurant in Tainan and imagined getting some snakes in the gallery to keep them around tiers. I was picturing myself training as a snake charmer, for a minute.

I visited the café again to share my idea with Blue. My second visit to the café, I was talking with him over the counter. He prepared me a chocolate cake with cream on top. I put the cream in my mouth and I was surprised. It was unexpected flavor. It was brandy cream which I never knew existed.

Our conversation went on to about culture of burning paper money.

He told me about 迎王平安祭 festival to burn a big ship, and also people burn paper cars and paper houses for the dead. So, burning is a way to send things to another world.

“Just like I prepare the cake, and you know what it is only when it is already melted in your mouth” said Blue. And I understood.

When paper objects are burnt, paper money are burnt, smoke goes up in the sky and it disappear from one’s sight. The prayer; preparation and act of burning, will be received, felt, tasted and smelled by someone or somewhere unknown.

I would not know the taste of a cake which someone is eating.

I decided to prepare my own paper snake.

Chia-hsuan and Tina took me to masters’ studios. 剪黏 master 葉明吉and Sato Paper Art 佐藤紙藝薪傅 master 洪國霖. I saw their hands; many years of practice, life time practice.

The bicycle (GIANT) is rusted. The front wheel still spins but not the rea. I had to do it at night, had to avoid the heat of day time. I lifted the rea tier and pushed from the café to my studio, 1 km.

I remove the tier tubes, then placed a long paper snake. The snake is made of newspaper, and small circular papers are glued on its surface as if they are scales. The snake is 赤尾青竹絲 green snake.

“Peek Pole”
The first week here, I walked around streets taking pictures, and look for food which does not require much linguistic communications. Everything is interesting to a tourist’s eye, and 金爐 the hearth caught my eyes. They are in front of shops, houses, and on street corners. I asked Cha-hsuan and Tina the studio staff what they are. I learnt what they are, and I went a shop and bought $200 of yellow paper money. Since I was interested in this subject, Tina arranged a visit to Tzeng Guo-Rung who’s work deals with traditional culture, at woodshop where he was working on a wooden bed for his upcoming exhibition. He told me about gods and ghosts, different types of paper money for different purpose. It was interesting to know that this paper money itself is not sacred. There I met a boy in his age of 10 or 11. He comes around this woodshop after school to work on some project. He took me and Tina to his grandfather’s Daoist temples and showed me how to lit incents, how many times to bow, and how to burn paper money in 金爐 the hearth. He told me each gods’ names, backgrounds and characteristics. I was overwhelmed by the numbers of gods. When we walked out of the temple, there were over size gods, four of them, sitting in a room and TV was on as if gods are watching. Tina explained to me that people wants gods to know what is happening in our society.

Gods here seem to be just like people, just different species. Neanderthals come to my mind…. Gods live here.

I wanted to do something with gods. I think I wanted to be closer with them because they are important to the people here.

I took IKEA mirror stand in my bedroom and go around the city. My initial idea was to make images look like god’s face peeks out of my head, just like those panels at touristic site with holes for people to fit their faces in.

While I was practicing, it was more fun to do it with other humans. The process of taking picture required patient. The person with a camera needs to work with the person with a mirror to find a right angle, height, and distance. The results are always funny, with distorted face or not matching face and body.

I used photoshop and made about 100 images into a slide animation so that the position of all mirror in each image are aligned. I started to see a polar coordinate system.

We live under condition of gravity, we often see things above ground. Ground level is the base. But if we apply different system to locate ourselves, we can conceptually grasp the other layers in the world. If the mirror is the pole, bodies can be here, there, or anywhere.

Now I came back to the meta world of gods and ghosts.

“Gate and the Gatekeeper at 1246 Sanhe Street”
First three weeks, I did not know where to dispose garbage from basket. I was secretly hoping someone will clear the basket. It was getting full. Tie the first bag and put it next to the basket. The second bag was almost full. But there are no sign of them disappearing. Finally I asked the staff and it was also written on the residency manual. I learnt that there will be a truck on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday in front of the San Ho Art Labo at 18:07. I waited with my garbage in front of my door. When it getting close to the time, there are people gathering on this corner with their colorful plastic bags. The truck approaches with its signature music. People start to throw their bags in, before the truck stops. I saw a small excitement in everyone. I loved this activity. It recalled one of my childhood memories. Until I was 5 years old, I lived in a house in front of a small park. I was very shy child but was happy to see children in the neighborhood were always coming to my place, which I later realized a public park. So, this time the truck stops in front of where I live. I feel like everyone is coming to my place and share this exciting festival like activity together 4 times a week. I feel included. I don’t have to talk or understand the language. Just throw plastic bags into back of the truck, then I am a part of the community. I am getting familiarized with my neighbors’ faces, just like when I was a child at the park.

I started to video record this activity. I was attracted to this collective of people how they gather, wait, and go back to their ways. The truck is parked on site for 3 minutes. 4 times a week. 一二四六 (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday). 4 times a week is more than half a week. I try to edit the video in the way the truck is always parked in this corner, never leaves. Because this activity is becoming like never ending déjà vu to me. Then I was editing this 3 minutes footage of each day, I played with timeline going back and forth. People throws their plastic bags into the truck but receiving bags right after so they have bags to throw again. I was interested in the choreographed dance like movements. After a while, I started to notice the person in charge with a helmet standing next to the truck. Everybody is in action yet he/she stands straight, maybe moves a few steps, standing as the gatekeeper.

【Chika Matsuda】
Born in 1983, in Japan. Graduated and received her BA from Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, New Zealand in 2006. MFA from University of Arizona, U.S.A. in 2010. Matsuda has been invited to several artist-in-residencies, such as Process-Space Art Festival (Bulgaria), Border Art Residency (U.S.A.), Prairie Center of the Arts (U.S.A.), Agora Winter Residency (Germany), Homesession (Spain), Centre CLARK (Canada).

Since 2015, she started to work as an inter-disciplinary collaborative team Earless Mouth / Mouse. The team incorporates software programing and technology with Art, and their work have been awarded a judge’s prize at Gifu Land of Clear Waters Art Festival Art Award IN THE CUBE 2017 in Japan. In 2019, member of Earless Mouth / Mouse, Miwo Amamiya and Matsuda started a collaborative unit “CHIKA, MIWO, & MORE”. Their projects are process oriented which involves discussion with people in the community, and often produces side projects such as a bar, a cafe, a salon, magic show, and fortune telling, and so on. They use these side projects which appears to be playful, faking and non-sense performance as a communication tool.

More Information：https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61559220179460