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On the Political Fabrication in 91 Square Meters of Time—Wu Chi-Yu Solo Exhibition

What kind theory of technology is adequate to depict and assess our post-colonial condition? Have we actually incorporated the tensions and changes caused by the accelerated globalization and regional political economy into our awareness of de-colonization and its progression? Or have we consciously deported them from the territories of our politics and quotidian existence, and thereby put a gloss of balance on the unpleasant reality?

As a natural phenomenon commercialized by the global consumerism, “aurora” is treated as the point of departure for this exhibition.

Wu Chi-yu  ”Nosedive” Video Installation, 2017, 15’00″, Dimensions variable (image courtesy the artist and TKG+ Projects) 吳其育，高速落海，2017，錄像裝置，15’00”，尺寸視場合而定 (圖檔由藝術家及TKG+ Projects提供)

The artist then stretched his imagination about the impact of the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis on Formosa, turning the missile’s tail flame into the “tropical flare” and blending it with the deluge myth of the Tao people on the Orchid Island, thereby fabricating a space of politico-natural mythology underpinned by the two mutually mirroring islands. The islands, oyster shells, creatures and 3D images either juxtapose or interlace with one another in the work Tropical Flare, shaping the “geology of image” that attempts to transform our Russian doll-like identities of colonization into the squeezed, penetrating and non-linear ethnic narratives of orogeny.

WU Chi-Yu: 91 Square Meters of Time, courtesy of the artist and TKG+ Projects(時間91平方米– 吳其育個展，圖檔由藝術家及TKG+ Projects提供)

Wu Chi-yu “Nosedive” Video Installation, 2017, 15’00”, Dimensions variable  (image courtesy the artist and TKG+ Projects) 吳其育，高速落海，2017，錄像裝置，15’00”，尺寸視場合而定 (圖檔由藝術家及TKG+ Projects提供)

Featuring the montage of many technology-based, phantom-like images such as aerial filming and missile launch, the work Nosedive produces an image of globalization that seamlessly connects the spherical surface of the ocean with that of the atmosphere. This work also insinuates that the geopolitics of East Asia in the post-Cold War era, along with our lives, is subject to the networks of ballistic missiles and electromagnetic monitoring technology. Titled 91 Square Meters of Time, this exhibition highlights the potential difference in our horizons between the global and the regional levels, alerting us to the bio-political reality that what we can see is little more than fragments when Taiwan is gradually integrated into the networked global society. In sum, this exhibition construes the diverse optical illusions as the possibilities for forming viewer subjectivity beyond the hegemonic way of viewing, which is nothing short of seeing a Fata Morgana in a cave.

* A Fata Morgana, known as an unusual and complex form of superior mirage, is a natural phenomenon of refraction resulting from the atmospheric ducting at the inversion layer of the atmosphere.

WU Chi-Yu: 91 Square Meters of Time, courtesy of the artist and TKG+ Projects(chinese:時間91平方米– 吳其育個展，圖檔由藝術家及TKG+ Projects提供)