Comments on the Finalist

Although the work mostly uses the “deluge myth” shared by many indigenous cultures as a starting point, the artist does not rest on the approach of simple allusion and explanation, but further expands the concept of “narrative” in the myth to formulate issues that adequately respond to the contemporary world. In terms of the spatial design, the exhibition interweaves sculpture, theatrical stage and video. The approach of amalgamating the real and the fantastic precisely pinpoints the nature of mythology, narrative and information society, which becomes a stunning feature of the exhibition. (Commentator / KAO Jun-Honn)

Artwork Introduction

“Great flood” is a common myth shared by many races around the world. No one knows precisely when the great flood happened during the dawn of time. Stored in the collective subconscious of humankind, this mythic history marks a certain synchronicity shared by different races. This project explores and captures certain narrative features shared among “myth,” “consciousness” and “contemporary image” to integrate them into a dream-like script resembling “the state of consciousness.” Using contemporary image to interpret and represent varying forms and symbols in ancient myths, the exhibition attempts to reconstruct our contemporary way of perceiving the world.

About the Artist

LIU Yu was born in 1985. Starting from 2014 onward, she has gradually developed in her practice a working methodology in the form of a series of field studies characterized by a documentary nature. She uses human viewpoints, changes of spatial attributes and how things are constantly being defined in systems to delineate the progression of humanity. Her work references the original forms of multiple image vocabularies, ranging from publication of writings, cinematic documentary to semi-documentary. The massive amount of field research and collection of literature propels her to re-arrange the possibilities of these vocabularies, enabling her to integrate interlinking and supplementing spatial, historical, imagerial and narrative fragments.