Comments on the Finalist

Using travel photos taken by herself and strangers, WANG Hsiang-Lin’s exhibition addresses the dominance of visual technology over social networks and media in contemporary life. The exhibition reflects on the present condition of how different types of screens have taken hold of people’s preservation of memory as screen sizes and pixel density continually improve. In the exhibition, the artist uses the projection of a cave as well as images of seaside bonfires and the sunrise in nature to explore the disparity between visual and cognitive perception – a topic that has been explored since Plato’s time – and by doing so, sustains the lasting inquiry about whether cognition comes from “viewing” or “debating.” In another gallery space parallel to the previous one, the artist empties the contents of the exhibited images to instead convey memories of travel and movement through music, exhibiting bodily experiences that cannot be technologically stored and replicated. This exhibition is as much informed by philosophical thinking as it is by sensibility. (Commentator / WU Chieh-Hsiang)

Artwork Introduction

This exhibition unfolds with the artist’s childhood experience of space-time conversion at the beach. Through reconstructing and imagining past events and locations, the artist transforms fissures in personal experience and consciousness into the moving process between “dream” and “reality.” As the world gradually evolves in its operation and establishes different ways of viewing and perception of experience, are we living in an imagined reality or the real reality today? When the material interface changes, is there any difference between “presence” and “absence”? Is the accumulation of memory in time an empty dream after all?

About the Artist

WANG Hsiang-Lin was born in Taipei in 1984. After receiving her master’s degree in music performance from the City University of New York, she received photography training at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York. With a solid training in classical music, WANG later shifted her focus to visual arts. Her work primarily revolves around personal life experiences, through which she contemplates on the relationship between individuals and the world. In recent time, she has begun exploring uncertainties through representing cryptomnesia, and attempts to depart from images in memory to discuss different viewing possibilities. WANG was an artist-in-residence at Cité internationale des arts in France in 2017. She is the recipient of the Grand Prize of the Taipei Art Award in 2015.