Official Website
A series of three photographs
60 x 75 cm each
The artist wrote three texts below on alien-like octopuses as an expression of the alienation that she had experienced during her first year living in France.
– The French word “étrangère,” which means foreigner or outsider in feminine form.
– The significance of being Taiwanese in traditional Chinese.
– The numbers from the artist’s Taiwanese passport.
Photograph
112 x 76 cm
Numbers from the artist’s Taiwanese passport are written on an alien-like octopus.
Installation
Dimensions Variable
Last spring, I happened to walk into a grandfather and a father at their family owned orange grove on a rainy day when they were to fixing their roof. Their farm is located at a mountain just outside of Taipei, where I grew up. The father told me that he was raised in the groves and learned how to graft orange trees from his grandfather. During the 80’s when Taiwan was rapidly industrializing, their family adapted to more profitable businesses in the city, but kept the orange farm as a hobby. Like me, his children are living abroad in the States and Canada. They are studying urban planning and fashion design, and are not interested in continuing the orange farming business. Though the father has always enjoyed waking up early and working in the farm with his family, he does not mind that his children are pursuing more ambitious goals of their own.
I see the process of grafting as a powerful metaphor for how one’s life may adapt to another then merge, transform, and become stronger as a whole through time. For the exhibition Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves at ZKM Center of Art and Media in Karlsruhe, I worked with the meseum’s Dr. Andreas F. Beitin who has a deep knowledge with plants to apply the same grafting technique used by local farmers on apple tress that are native to Karlsruhe and create a little forest where old and new branches are merging and fruiting.
The text that I have written repetitively on the branches, leaves, and fruits is a Buddhist scripture, the Heart Sutra, that I have memorized since I was little. It is a text about the wisdom of emptiness and by applying the text on ephemeral objects such as the apple trees, the fleeting existence of these objects are revealed as they undergo the natural cycle of growth, decay and rebirth. The transformation of the text and the trees reveals the complex and fascinating relationship between nature, spirituality, and intellect.
“Germany Has Declared War on Russia. Swimming in the Afternoon.” Kafka – diary, 1914.
Video Installation
1 minute
Video link
The quote from Kafka’s diary in 1914 unveils a dilemma between the collective consciousness verses individual behavior. Often times while listening to the news on the radio or reading the newspaper, we feel very strongly about the injustices happening around the world. On the other hand, even after such moments, our everyday life continues the way it has always been as if nothing had happened.
In this video, I wrote Kafka’s quote on my hand as a reminder of the mixed feelings of confidence and defeat of an individual’s effect on the society. The video is projected onto a table where the viewer would put his/her hand on top of my projected hand. It is as if I am writing the quote like a note of reminder on their hands. Then as they walk away the writing fades as well.
Love Until I Rot
32 seconds
Commissioned by Cartier
Video Link
The work was created for a project for a renown jeweler as they pose the question “How Far Would You Go For Love?” and invited seven young artists to each make an artwork in response. The video was presented as part of an online exhibition from 8 June 2007 ~ 25 August 2009. Below is the work description by the curator of the project Hélène Kelmachter from Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris and the artist.
Curator: In a work of poetic strangeness, Charwei Tsai paints mantras onto ephemeral surfaces such as blocks of tofu, petals, and fruits. An exploration of the fleeting nature of things, her work expresses the finitude of being. For her, love too is destined to wither away. The desire for a perfect love incites her to flee the perspective of a relationship, which like an over-ripe fruit, will rot. For the Love website she has made a molding of her foot in cheese and tattooed the ankle. She then left this imprint to decompose in her studio, filming its gradual disappearance.
Artist: I tattooed the words “Love Until I Rot” on a foot (casted from my own) of rotting cheese. I enjoy working with cheese a lot, as on one hand, it is eminent for its foul odor and texture covered with microorganisms rotting and growing at the same time; on the other hand, the taste gets better with time, and the stronger the taste is, the more addictive it can be. Tattoo attracts me for the same sense of contradiction, as it is often believed to symbolize eternity, especially when applied to love, while at the same time, our skin as a canvas is ever changing. For me, for better or worse, everything is in constant flux, and love cannot escape this vigorous cycle.
