text by Wang Pin-Hua
When I curated the research exhibition on the 1980s for the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in 2012 [1], I invited artist Wu Mali to display her 1987 work Zero Point Literature, a spatial installation constructed with newspaper, paper shredder, and the sound of typewriters. This work, along with Gnawing Texts, Reaming Words (1993), which is composed of shreds of the Bible and other classics, and The Library, which was displayed during the 1995 Venice Biennale, were created with similar methods, and both correspond to the first subtitle of Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts’ 2023 Dàng: Wu Mali: “Diverse Fruits of the Avant-garde—Deconstruction of the Knowledge System.” The title of this subcategory was inspired by the Yuan-Liou Art Book series, in which the artist acted as editor-in.chief. At the time, Wu not only translated important art books and concepts herself, such as publications on Dadaism, Beuys, and Bauhaus, but also published translations on contemporary art and feminism, contributing to the development of the art profession. As an artist, Wu incorporated the poetic approaches in Zero Point Literature as a way of signifying the onset of a new era of reflections in local construction and on the epistemology of avant-garde art, gender issues, ecological art, and environmental art.
From research on the 1980s over a decade ago to contemporary times, we have witnessed the wave-like development of the times. As an artist who started creating works that express critique through avant-garde approaches in the 80s, Wu’s works have revealed to us the duo development of the times and the individual, as well as the changes in the relationship between society and art. The artist continues to respond to the drastic changes seen in the local region and the times, and her oeuvre displays three stages of developmental change.
First, in her 1985 solo exhibition Time Space, held at Shen-Yu Gallery in Taipei, Wu placed torn and crumpled newspaper installations across the exhibition space. Visitors entered a wrapped space, their footsteps making noises as they walked. Through the exhibition, we see Wu’s training in sculpture from the sculpture department at the Arts Academy of the City of Düsseldorf, and her localization process as she returned to Taiwan. The work first transforms the three-dimensional sculpture into a spatial installation, mirroring how site-specific sculptures are transformed into spatial installations and its developmental tendency toward environmental art and landscape art in the West in the 1960s. Furthermore, the use of newspapers, a medium for everyday information, heralded the artist’s later appropriation of ready-made objects and social symbols as satire toward reality. This was the artist’s first creative stage of responding to Taiwan’s spatial revolution in the 1980s social movements. The art history connotations of the artist’s transition from modern sculpture to spatial installations was a topic that I was unable to delve into during the 2012 research exhibition.
The 1997 work Epitaph centers around the taboo issues of female roles and gender awareness in the context of the February 28 incident. Stories of Women from Hsin-Chuang, invited to be showcased during the Lord of the Rim exhibition curated by Rita Chang, delves into the family life history of local textile female laborers. The 1998 Treasure Island features the identity of veterans and other groups. During this period, the artist transitioned from an on-site social “analyst” of her early critical works into a “reporter” of historical reality, as well as an “activist” giving voice to those whose stories were forgotten amid the traumas of history [2].
“These works are all related to my concern about artistic practices. They propose historical perspectives, but also touch the realm of the public: publicness and the public. In the history of the public, interviewing the life experiences of others has become a process of empowerment amid social relationships.” But when images become artworks, Wu starts contemplating, who is the beneficiary? Are the works made solely to bolster the artist's reputation? If the focus is on gender and social critique but falls into dualistic thinking, how can we escape this restrictive framework?
Through reflections, the artist opened a new realm in the mid-stages of her creative career. Wu’s 1999 work Secret Garden marked a significant turning point [3]. The artist created a work that featured an underground passage filled with the aroma of plants and was cool and heartwarming. The piece was well-received and led the artist to realize that when "art" transforms into a “gift,” it alters the connection between people and their lives, fostering a relationship of sharing. This experience is also demonstrated in the 2000 textile workshop Awake in Your Skin. Through the workshop and learning process, the homemakers who were initially isolated in their separate domestic chores were able to share experiences and gain different understandings of their life journeys. In the end, the women worked together to create the Bed Sheets of Soul. The artist succeeded in allowing art to “encounter” life and living, fostering an intersubjective dialogue that allowed each other to be the “speaking subject.”
Art as Environment: A Cultural Action on Tropic of Cancerin 2006-07, Taipei Tomorrow as a Lake Again in 2008, and other environmental art actions. In Art as Environment: A Cultural Action on Tropic of Cancer, Wu invited 30 artists to visit 20 villages or neighborhoods, fostering conversations between artists and residents that led to diverse practices and allowed art to permeate the public and everyday life in society. Through these artistic endeavors, Wu went a step beyond Western avant-garde history; not only did she break free from the notion of "artists creating personal mythologies" through altruistic social practice, but she also facilitated a paradigm shift from the artist's creativity to the connection between art and society. This approach is also exemplified in the second sub-theme of the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts’ Dang solo exhibition: “Super Mario—From Opposing and Criticizing to Coexisting and Merging with the Institution.”
The insights and reflections gained from the Tropic of Cancer project inspired the artist to explore ways of expanding community work, leading to the 2011 initiative, Art as Environment: A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek. This project utilized curatorial practices to organize field investigations of streams and rivers, inviting artists and mobilizing neighborhood families to participate. Over the two-year time, the project engaged various professions and disciplines, constructing a public history of the rivers and streams as well as their water ecology. This endeavor earned the artist the well-deserved Taishin Arts Award in 2013, and her long-standing art practices and social interventions also contributed to her winning the National Award for Arts in 2016.
The Taip ei Fine Arts Museum 2018 Taipei Biennial, titled Post-Nature—A Museum as an Ecosystem, was co-curated by Wu and Francesco Manacorda. It highlighted environmental issues in response to the curr ent scarcity of resources and drastic 180 climate changes. The art museum was reimagined as a space for discourse that fostered coordination, transition, collaboration, transmission, and absorption. Simultaneously, it became an institution with open doors, embracing a socially participative role that merged with the local community and culture. On a global scale, the art museum also served as a facilitator for collaboration between different disciplines and institutions [4]. This exhibition fully embodied the core message of the third sub-theme: “Sustainable Homeland in Capitalist Ruins—Eco-environment Cooperation Network/Hyphal System.”
From the 1980s to the present day, the artist’s works have spanned Taiwan’s transition into a democratic society and its development of local culture. The artist is a revolutionary, participant, activist, and witness; in the dual axis of the era and the individual, or society and art, Georges Bataille believed there to be two consumer methods in human economic activities, one is productive expenditure, as in purposeful expenditure, which is also the profit-driven, consumerism economy of Capitalism, and the other is nonproductive expenditure, which Bataille defines as waste and does not contain specific objectives and plans; it is a pure economic form without objectives and planning, and consumes for the sake of consumption [5]. If the 1980s in Taiwan was a time when the conflict between the two economic forms was accentuated through the conflict between mainstream authoritarianism and the lower classes of society, then the resistance that rose in various fields and on the streets are “wasteful economy,” which brought forth profound societal changes. I would like to add Karatani Kojin’s concepts on the importance of gifts [6]. Through works that she created during the middle and later stages of her career, the artist Wu Mali transformed others into the “speaking subject” through intersubjectivity and empowerment, and through the construction of a publicized ecology, Wu has in fact created another mode of “gift economy,” allowing the artist’s talents to become a creative gift that contributes to the well-being of others.
Dàng: Wu Mali Solo Exhibition
2023.03.11 - 2023.07.02
Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts Room 104-105
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1. Wang Pin-Hua curated “When Spaces Became Events… Dispositif of Modernity in the 1980s, Taiwan,” Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, October 27, 2012 – January 6, 2013.
2. Edited by Suzanne Lacy, Mapping the Terrain: NewGenre Public Art, translated by Wu Mali et. al., 2004, Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing, pp.217-219.
3. Invited to attend the “Art in March: Legend99”exhibition curated by Huang Hai-Ming and Shi Rui-Ren.
4. Curatorial statement of Taipei Fine Arts Museum’s 2018 Taipei Biennial Post.Nature—A Museum as an Ecosystem, p.2.
5. Georges Bataille,Eroticism, Expenditure, and General Economy: SelectedWritings by Georges Bataille, edited by Wang An-Min, Changchun City China: Jilin People’s Press, 2003, p.28.
6. Karatani Kojin, translated by Lin Hui-Jun, The Structure of World History, Taipei: PsyGarden, 2013. |
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