Date｜06.01.2023 - 07.16.2023
Veune｜Submarine
At the beginning of the exhibition, I reasonably believed that humans cannot breathe underwater.
"Let's see which one of us can hold back longer in the water?" This is a playful question. Those who initiate the challenge contemplate that they will win. Everyone understands that this temporary uncomfortable experience is the basis for intriguing, but the real world is totally different. Before the "Age of Exploration," European fleets considered South America to be the Garden of Eden before the fall of man. Later, centuries-long voyages of curiosity and lost explorations occurred on Earth. Primitive tribes seemed to evaporate in unavoidable events. The occupation forced the loss to become a treasure, leaving only complex debts and deep wounds. However, these situations have not disappeared in contemporary society. Capital imbalances in society are creating new lows, where the shallows are suffocating and the depths are drowning. Free media, diverse arts, and peripheral cultures are forced to hide around us. These places are the contemporary lost lands that people mistakenly think they know well, but are truly unfamiliar.
The exhibition invites seven domestic and international artists. Ya-Chu Kang deconstructs the patterns and context of weaving through weaving itself, extracting abstract industrial history into cultural paths. Lin-Li Liao opens up a pure perceptual path, interpreting the irreversible nature of time and the subtle changes in material. Erik Bünger assigns a virtual character to serve as the translator for the late gorilla Koko, responding to our endangered world through silent sign language. Yan-Xiang Lin has long moved the hidden vacuum violence scene under government development through his practice and interviews. Riar Rizaldi presents a tragic critique of the modern tooling colonization of nature from the colonial era to the present. Ching-Yuan Chen hides unnamable pain in seemingly quiet scenes. Ya-Wen Tang subtly expounds a life story and connects it to the relationship between labor and food in this era. The artists to each other, the art space to society, and the lost lands to the world quietly open up new possibilities in various forms through this breath-holding game.
In this context, confronting the organs of social hypoxia, creating innovative coexistence models, and critiquing false concern are the indicative issues of the Submarine opening exhibition "Let's see which one of us can hold back longer in the water?".
At the end of the exhibition, I reasonably believe that humans still cannot breathe underwater.
