The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

193 Yao Jui-chung Wandering in the lens A star, a grain of sand, a temple or a ruin — everything is just an idea and a thought that reflects a secret landscape deep in people’s heart. 1 Yao Jui-chung belongs to a generation of contemporary Taiwanese artists whose work underscores the ideological landscape of post- martial law Taiwan. 2 Working across photography, performance, video, sculpture and drawing, Yao explores the complicated terrain of Taiwanese cultural identity, which was compounded by the country’s entanglement with Cold War ideology during the martial law period, its successful embrace of capitalism and democratic reform, and the effects of corporate multi-nationalism on industry and trade. Yao’s work simultaneously registers the political implications arising from these histories and makes evident the irreverent use of political subtexts in contemporary art, ‘unmask[ing] certain fantastic situations hidden within the uncontrollable human will’. 3 Since the early 1990s, Yao has traversed Taiwan and its surrounding islands, compiling hundreds of photographs of places abandoned as a result of the social and economic development of modern Taiwan. Everything will fall into ruin 1990–2009 brings together a selection of 48 photographs, grouped into four thematic sets of ‘ruins’ — derelict sites of industry, abandoned civil dwellings, deserted military and prison infrastructure, and the refuse of statuary scattered throughout the countryside. These otherworldly images of destroyed, weathered and forgotten sites — man-made, yet devoid of human presence — are salient markers for shifts of power, and collectively reveal an enormous black hole in Taiwan’s socio-political history. The detritus of rapid industrialisation is captured in these photographs of defunct factories and industrial plants. Many once profitable industries, which aided Taiwan’s economic boom during the late twentieth century, are now in decline. They have since been supplanted by global competition, with many businesses relocating to mainland China, where lower production costs have accommodated high- polluting industries and reconfigured Taiwan’s export industries. Residential areas have also been affected by migration patterns and environmental change, leaving behind ghost towns and dilapidated housing projects; for instance, homes in mountainous areas have collapsed as a result of poor design and natural disasters. Yao’s photographs of military bases on Taiwan’s west coast and political prisons on its east coast recall the oppressive history of the Kuomintang Party of China (KMT) and the Taiwan Garrison Command, a secret police unit whose wide-ranging powers under martial law allowed the trial of civilians by military courts on charges of sedition. Offshore island bases that once functioned as Taiwan’s front line of defence are now left barren as Taiwan and China reach cooperative agreements in the ongoing process of rapprochement. Abandoned theme parks littered with sculptures, along with discarded religious deities, suggest both the reification of religious and commercial icons and the ravages of contemporary consumption and waste. The coexistence of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and capitalism in Taiwanese daily life has produced visual clutter of discarded gods, and surreal traces of faded hopes and material desire. Yao provides little detail of the time and location for each image, allowing the group to be interpreted through broader considerations. Yao’s photographs — while responding to the complexities underlying Taiwan’s relationship with China — also function collectively in characterising ruination as an essential experience within the life cycle of all things. As Yao describes it, all things ultimately fade: After the decay and destruction of their physical being, they reappear in another form and preserve the aura of the original being as relics . . . Although our brief existence is accompanied by decay, the silent ruins may be a symbol of the constant birth and death process in nature. Too much commemoration and reconstruction will distort the lesson hidden within. If we can understand this, ruins are no longer just ruins, but are an essential experience in life. 4 As Taiwan’s metropolitan and rural centres witness dramatic social and physical transformation, and the structural evidence of these changes continues to be reclaimed by nature, Yao’s photographs capture the last remaining memories of things past. Once inspired by his discovery of graffiti in an abandoned building which declared, ‘the world outside awaits us’, Yao continues his poetic roaming, tracking the spirits hidden in Taiwan’s ruins and revealing their secret landscapes. Jose Da Silva Endnotes 1 Yao Jui-chung, email to the author, 2 July 2009. 2 Taiwan’s period of martial law from 1949 to 1987 is considered the longest in modern history. Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the nationalist Kuomintang Party of China (KMT), withdrew to Taiwan with two million soldiers following its loss to the communists during the Chinese civil war. The emergency decrees were lifted 38 years later by his successor and son, President Chiang Ching-kuo. 3 Yao Jui-chung, ‘The historical destiny of humanity has a certain incurable absurdity’, trans. Eric Chang and Craig D Stevens, in Yao Jui-chung , Garden City Publishing, Taipei, Taiwan, 2008, p.11. 4 Yao, email to the author.