ARTIST STATEMENT
No longer under the watchful gaze of an omni present regime, with space to breathe and the luxury to expand and evolve from its original incarnation of 3 images to 5. I present to you RED COATS + INDIANS 2.0 for Biennale Jogja XVI Equator #6 2021.
Exploring and deepening overt and covert threads of multiple epochs, storylines, narratives, binding them with a plethora of mediums, material culture, objects, costume, dance, theatre to create performance based photographs. Photography that facilitates and engages a stimulating ‘experience’ that transcends, communicates, transforms. Digitally captured and distilled into a series of 5 single images that collectively and individually contain and suggest subversive and alternate dialogues of colonialism.
RED COATS + INDIANS 2.0 is an installation of 5x custom built ‘light boxes’ and an audio sound work, reconstituted into this latest site specific iteration.
Covert trojan narratives encoded in the tableau. Colour coded visual references to Taiwan’s turbulent 200 year history enduring 4 colonial occupations. RED is the colour of the coloniser, overtly it is Brittish. Covertly it represents Japan + China. GOLD is the colour of the royal family and represents the indigenous Taiwanese tribes and aborignal Formosans (Portuguese colonial era name for Taiwan)
I acknowledge and honour the traditional landowners, Amis Tribe. And the support of TaiTung County Government and National TaiTung University, Taiwan.
GROUP EXHIBITION
2021
BIENNALE Jogja XVI Equator #6 2021
Jogja National Museum, Yogyakarta, INDONESIA
INSTALLATION VIEWS
