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The Context

脈絡

  To Cia Hsinyuan Lee, creation (Painting), at the initial stage during the series of 〈Netting〉was to deal with the relations, though combining lines and color blocks, between Cia and people about values, feelings and body language. It simply was self-healing and transforming which happened naturally while not knowing much yet.

 

  In 2004, Cia moved back to the city where she grew up. The life was different from her former life. She had not only encountered the death of family members, but also been aware of unfamiliarity to the place she used to know. Under all kinds of unexpected situations, the context of her creation had a critical change and developed to a brand new phase in which she started to discover her family pedigree and self-identity. In the past ten years, facing a variety of nonplussed predicaments and doubts and feelings unable to be expressed by words, she has transformed them into art pieces by using the photos of her family and the fairy books from her childhood as the materials. Then those art pieces present the visual documents which interpret the entanglements of herself with her memory in different time periods.

 

  In 2012, she decided to leave her homeland (Taiwan) for a-year-long residence in Germany, hoping to refresh her life. At the end of 2013, with expectation and joy, she came back to “Sinying”, the city where she grew up. However what she felt was not asense of belonging but alienation. She started to reflect on who has changed, what “hometown” means and what is“belonging”.

 

  One day, while walking on a familiar street, she was suddenly aghast at an empty place where there used to be a wall with paintings on them. The wall was painted in a painting project named The City in Future which she had participated in her childhood. The painted wall had been there for at least twenty years. Realizing the wall disappearing at the place was like going through a spiritual violence in the mind because of a memorable place being extirpated. Moreover, the loss of the wall was a result of the urbanization; the transfer of ownership not only changes the face of a city little by little, but also destroys the “once”. Such realization gave a big knock on her head. Then the context of her creation extended from personal issues to the trace of urban transmutation and local history.

 

  The presence, the absence and the disappearance during city transformation in epochs have been Cia Hsinyuan Lee’s main concern for her creation since 2014.

 

   藝術創作(畫畫)在最初[織網]時期(2004之前),對李欣芫而言,是透過線條與色塊的視覺組合方式,處理個人與群體之間價值觀的、情緒的、身體的關係。創作就是一個懵懂、自然發生的自我療癒與轉化。

   

   2004年之後,重回成長的城市、面對家族成員的離世,及一個應該熟悉但卻著實陌生的地方,創作的脈絡產生了關鍵的變化,開啟一個家族系譜認識與自我認同問題的階段。在這過去十年的歷程中,透過個人的家族老照片、童年時代的童話書做為材料,轉化面對種種不知所措窘境,還有那些語言表達不了的疑問與情感。而作品完成後成為個人歷史轉化後的視覺檔案,詮釋在不同時期中自我與記憶的糾結關係。     

   在2013年底,旅居德國壹年後,再一次回到成長的地方 “新營“,帶著雀躍期待的心卻感受不到回到家的歸屬感,而開始思考「是誰變了?」什麼是「家鄉」、什麼是「歸屬」。

   某天,她走在熟悉的街道上,偶然發現一面名為「未來城市」童年參與的圍牆彩繪,完成至今已存在至少二十年的那面牆,消失在原本的位置上。當時的震驚像是經歷了一場記憶場所被剷除的暴力事件,進而意識到曾經熟悉的城市樣貌,正在一點一滴隨著城市化及易主的過程被更新,同時也被摧毀。重此,原本關注個人系譜的認同議題,擴大到與地方城市的發展痕跡與歷史的關懷。

   

   從2014年開始,地方城市變動在時代中的「在場」、「缺席」與「消失」成為李欣芫創作發展的主要關懷。

2015.08.05

 

 

 

 

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