PLAYBOUR

Artists participate in the exhibition PLAYBOUR take three material closely related to Taiwan’s development, including cane sugar, sulfur, and coral as their points of departure, respectively. The artists explore the cultural memories hidden beneath folds of natural landscape that stretch across the flatlands, mountains, and oceans, which interweave with the distribution of industrial resources. 

The landscape explored in this exhibition originates in Taiwan; yet, it also reveals the traces and marks of violence, war, colonization, and the geopolitical battle between Taiwan and other nations. From this, we may also find out that choices of all kinds of interests, sentimental value and material worth are greatly influenced by globalization at large. In comparison, the artists attempt to manifest the increasingly latent ideological tendency of interest and profit and the intensifying interrelation of body-society with their physical movements and the transition of senses. Here come the issues: How do the laboring (restricted, exploited, and moralized) bodies formulate the contemporary scenes of everyday life? How does today’s material and spiritual culture shape every individual?  

As the natural treasures are transformed and mutated in the process of chrysopoeia, they continue to intrigue humankind and propel them to a divided, precarious, and antagonistic bio-political situation. As intellectuals, while artists are concerning the thoughtful intervention and practices of the history of laboring, they may attempt to find a focal point in the process of dynamic struggle, using imagination (or practices) to reverse everyday life.