文 / 高志仁
A Taiwanese artist puts a face on his native culture.
In the 1980s, Taiwan saw a surge of social restlessness. Efforts to push democratic reform were gathering momentum through street protests and smaller-scale election campaigns after decades of authoritarian rule. At the same time, many political movements went hand in hand with calls for acknowledging local cultural traditions, which had been largely overlooked in educational institutions and the public sphere, and, as a result, in mainstream conceptions.
At the time of those early struggles for reform, many Taiwanese artists worked hard to seek common ground on cultural identification, sometimes forming groups to pursue specific artistic and philosophical goals. Wu Tien-chang (吳天章) of the Taipei Art Society, which was reorganized as the Hantoo Art Group in 1998, is a great representative of this high tide of embracing local identity and creativity. Among other things, Hantoo members seek to promote visual arts and reflect on the development of Taiwanese culture.
Born in 1956 in the central county of Changhua, Wu graduated from the fine arts department of Chinese Culture University in Taipei. He began his art career in the early 1980s, when he frequently found himself on the streets at rallies against the government's then authoritarian rule. Drawing for the covers of the mushrooming magazines released by political dissenters of the time was one of his regular jobs. Accordingly, in this initial stage of creation, Wu focused on blatant political motifs in his oil paintings. In an exhibition held at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 1989, just two years after martial law was lifted, for example, he presented a series of deconstructive images of powerful political figures in Taiwan and mainland China, including Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and former Republic of China (ROC) presidents Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo. The paintings were giant images of the leaders, the outlines of which were filled in with wounded individuals and submissive crowds. Several works in this line are now among the Taipei Fine Arts Museum's collection, as is A Symptom of the World's End (1986), which uses the motifs of injury, tension and horror.
Liu Chi-hui, a professor at National Chiao Tung University's Graduate Institute for Social Research and Cultural Studies, points out that the quest for a Taiwanese identity commenced in the mid-1970s as Taiwan's "stability" was gradually shaken by the changing situations at home and abroad. On the one hand, there was diplomatic isolation following the ROC's retreat from the United Nations and on the other, politically sensitive issues were more openly discussed.
"By the mid-1980s, Taiwan's society had started its revolt in different ways," Liu says. "Literary, theater and artistic circles introduced avant-garde movements to challenge conventions and the authorities." The twin aims of democratization and localization have since become both the basis of and driving force behind the major schools of thought and practices of many social activists in a wide range of fields in Taiwan.
Spotting a Fake
Liu notes parallels in the focus of Wu's artwork, changing from radical protests against the political violence of the martial law era in pieces from the mid-1980s, to works in the early 1990s concerning the issues of "home" or "Taiwanese-ness." Wu says the latter period included a search for identity. "I was trying to find how one can call oneself a Taiwanese," Wu recalls.
Many of Wu's works from this period were oil paintings, but arranged in the format of salon photographs--photos shot in the studio amid rococo furnishings and a backdrop such as a painted landscape--which were popular in Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s. The shapes of masculine bodies painted in an angry, protesting line in earlier works gave way to portraits of women or "feminized" men posing seductively in obviously artificial settings. Sometimes the subject matter was a parody of an old work by a distinguished Taiwanese painter or a famous poster from an old movie. In addition to oil paints, Wu used mixed media including photographs, imitation leather, plastic flowers, glass "diamonds" and all manner of other shiny items and fake gems. A feeling of gaudiness and luridness prevails in the works. Liu says the style suggests a black sense of humor, with a dark eroticism lurking behind the serene or familiar scenes.
Liu regards these works as an ambivalent reference to Taiwan's past. For the professor, Wu's appropriation of local Taiwanese folk elements reflected a common trend in the 1990s to establish a Taiwanese identity and consciousness. There is something uncanny, however, in this burgeoning identity. "Taiwanese culture has something unnatural or unreal about it," Wu notes, "and my work does, too." He says that Taiwan has many artificial elements such as the "bamboo" or "wooden" railings and benches found at scenic spots that are actually made of cement, for example, as well as magnificent model houses that are torn down a couple of weeks later when construction of the real ones begins. "Why do many people and critics say my work is very Taiwanese?" Wu asks. "It might be that the sense of unreality in my work resonates in the collective unconsciousness."
Wu's work is a cultural critique of what he sees as a Taiwanese tendency to choose convenient substitutes for something real, mature and enduring. The artist believes that this "substitutive culture" has its origins in a history of being occupied by a succession of powers from outside Taiwan, with the resultant mentality of a population "passing through" and reluctant to set down roots in local soil. He says that pieces like Farewell! Chun-chiu Pavilion (1993), in which a guitar-carrying sailor in uniform stands in front of a backdrop featuring the pavilion--a tourist spot near a military base in Kaohsiung--have a less political and more psychological context, such as a popular "obsession" with the naval uniform.
Wu, who grew up in the northern harbor city of Keelung, explains that during his childhood, he saw many sailors, including those from the U.S. Seventh Fleet then stationed in Taiwan, strolling the streets and visiting the pubs. "In a time when many people in Taiwan could not go abroad, sailors became a cool symbol on which they could project their imagination," Wu says. "That's also why the lyrics of many Holo songs were set in harbors."
A Study in Contrasts
Yao Jui-chung, a painter, photographer and art critic, points out that Wu subtly combines Taiwan's history, black comedy and kitschy objects to produce a unique Taiwanese style of playful, sarcastic sadness. "The main concern is a life experience that belongs to this land only," Yao notes, "but Wu's ultimate goal is to establish a sophisticated universal aesthetics with Taiwanese relevance."
Since the early 1990s, art critics and scholars such as Ni Tsai-chin, now a professor in Tunghai University's Department of Fine Arts, have hailed Wu as a great pioneer of local creativity and Taiwanese consciousness. Despite Wu's critique of Taiwanese culture, he believes that all existences are reasonable and have their own rationale. "That's why Taiwan's culture has now become something that one can be proud of, just as tai ke has," Wu says, referring to a controversial term to describe a Taiwanese whose family has lived in Taiwan for several generations.
Wu is often dubbed a tai ke artist, and in fact, the artist calls himself a first-generation tai ke, although the term, which means literally "Taiwan guest," is far from polite in origin. Immigrants from mainland China who arrived in Taiwan after 1945 originally used the term tai ke to describe local people, with the phrase carrying a strong connotation of an uncultured "bumpkin." It became a pejorative term that highlighted the gap in social status between the privileged newcomers, dubbed "mainlanders," and locals. Liu says that the label tai ke was employed to mock the perceived shallowness and vulgarity of local Taiwanese people, including the way they talked, their accents, and the way they dressed even down to their casual footwear. "I was really hurt when my mainlander or overseas Chinese schoolmates called me tai ke in high school," Wu recalls.
In the 1990s, however, the term was co-opted by the pop music industry--the most creative and thriving entertainment sector in Taiwan--to symbolize the new confidence in a Taiwanese identity as represented in local melodies and lyrics. The tai ke movement incorporated much of the "tackiness" or "vulgarity" usually associated with the term, embracing the traits as part of a local identity--one that is no longer a source of shame. National Chiao Tung University's Liu Chi-hui says that while Taiwanese people's sense of inferiority and the mainlander group's prejudice converged at the term tai ke, the dramatic gestures of Wu's tai ke style seem to be saying "Here I am. I'm not afraid of being looked at or laughed at. If you want, I'll give you even more to see and laugh at."
Commenting on his own work, Wu says that some things that are dark, rotten and dead in life are covered by a gorgeous surface. "The contrast is sharp and has a weirdness that's hard to explain," he adds. That contrast or dialectics between the superficial and hidden, the real and unreal or between fiction and fact has been carried further and to a subtler degree in Wu's works since the early 2000s, which mainly consist of "staged photography." Even more controlled than regular studio photography, Wu arranges every detail of the pictures, just like a film director who controls an actor's every move and all the details in a scene. Wu also relies heavily on computer manipulation of the images, and says the heavy modification of his photographic works makes them almost like paintings.
Wu loves acrobatics, magic and circus shows, and in a way his work can be viewed as a combination of those elements. He says that he produces special digital effects just as an acrobat performs difficult gestures, and also works like a magician to create an illusion that a photo was taken at a certain place and time. The final result of The Blind Men and the Street (2008), for example, was achieved after numerous experiments with merging, restructuring and modifying some 70 to 80 pictures taken in the studio. Every detail, ranging from the overall hue to how a particular bag hangs against a human figure, has been adjusted to "a perfect state" on the computer. "The key is to make the unreal look reasonable," Wu says. "My art borders on the real and unreal as well as on personal, subjective sentiments and precise, rational arrangements done by objective artistic standards." He emphasizes that an artist's own perception, or feeling, could be "translated" through his or her art, if the techniques are applied properly and accurately.
In addition to his many exhibitions in Taiwan, Wu has been frequently invited to art events overseas to present his unique Taiwanese style and aesthetics. His works have been exhibited in many countries worldwide including Australia, Britain, Canada, mainland China, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. Among other major international exhibitions, in 1997 Wu took part in the 47th Venice Biennale at its Taiwan Pavilion under the title "Taiwan, Taiwan, Facing Faces."
Wu believes not only has a Taiwanese identity definitely taken shape, "there's no way back." Yet, the process of forming this identity or the social undercurrents at work can sometimes be bizarre and elude clear definitions. Artist and critic Yao Jui-chung recognizes a "restless energy" in Wu's deceptively "superficial" work, which the art critic describes as a "weird, thrilling symphony playing the ambiguity of life." Wu says that he will continue to explore the spiritual dimension of human life and continue trying to "translate the untranslatable."
(Taiwan Review Byline:PAT GAO Publication Date:02/01/2009) |
|
