Chia-Wei Hsu
Écriture divine - Film - 10min - 2016
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 18
Northwest of Taiwan lies Mazu, an archipelago of 19 small islands. On the main one, a frog god called “Marshal Ironclad” is adulated by the inhabitants of a village called Chin-Pi. According to the legends, the divinity was born in 1400 BC in a pond in Southwest China. It then became the region’s protective deity and was worshipped in a temple on Mount Wu-Yi. After the Cultural Revolution, it is said, it found refuge among the inhabitants of Mazu.
Based essentially on this legend, my work is made up two parts. The first comprises a documentary shot in a movement capture studio. It features a very unusual ceremony which enables me to communicate with the frog god and talk with him so as to find out the original configuration of the temple dedicated to him which was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. The second part of the film was made at the same time as the first, but developed using the movement captures of the god on his palanquin. These movements will be assembled with the 3D recreation of the temple to create an animation film. The work thus combines a documentary and a 3D animation. It examines a historical and political reality from an artistic viewpoint.
Chia-Wei Hsu
Chia Wei Hsu creates films to build sensitive visual narratives about geographical, historical and cultural regions in Asia. Hsu is interested in the forgotten histories of the Cold War in Asia. His works develop a keen sensitivity that weaves together reality and illusion, history and the present by building a circuit of events in the hors champ of people and places off the screen of history. The artist reveals how the dense and complex layers of cultures and histories fundamentally transform peoples' lives in the modern age. In 2013, he was invited to present his works at the Venice Biennale, for the Taiwan Pavilion, and was nominated for the Hugo Boss Asia Art Prize. His work has been shown in numerous museum exhibitions, biennales and film festivals, notably the Jeu de Paume (2011), the 39th International Film Festival of Rotterdam (2012), the Liverpool Biennale (2012), the Taipei Biennale, and the 8th International Documentary Film Festival of Taiwan.
Production
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the Association for the development of the community Qinbi of the municipality of Beigan, county of Lienchiang.
