Confronting Memories─Wang Ding-Yeh Solo Exhibition
WANG Ding-Yeh
Venue：VT Artsalon
Comments on the finalist artworks
Continuing the exploration of a family story within the grand historical context, the artist used more refined vocabularies to create this highly heartwarming and poetic presentation. In the process of reconstructing the story, all the ambiguous, indescribable and unspeakable things as well as the time and space that cannot be expressed through images were represented by means of subtle implications. The exhibition made use of a rather simple element: writings made with dust collected from house-cleaning. The colloquial words (Romanized, phonetical spellings of Taiwanese) exposed the politics of language, and were matched with marble stones, images, photographs and videos in a setting permeated with a yellow glow. The strange, the unfamiliar, the audio, the verbal, all of which seemed to be transient and ephemeral, contrarily created a sense of permanence that was reminiscent of monumental inscriptions in the exhibition. (Commentator: WU Mali)
About the Artwork
Confronting Memories is WANG Ding-Yeh’s second installment in the family history series. The two Chinese characters in the title have been taken from his grandfather’s journal. His own family provides the narrative text for the work. In the process of collecting the text, elderly family members were invited to join a Line group chat, and asked to write down memory fragments in a reconstruction of the family’s collective memory and open up new mutual conversation. Through this exhibition, relationships between family members also underwent subtle transformations.
In presenting the work and the exhibition, WANG Ding-Yeh uses dust gathered from cleaning his own home to reveal words in Taiwanese dialect spelled out phonetically on the wall. In the dim glow of faint light, viewers sound out the phonetics written in dust on the wall. The dust, faint light, and murmuring all amalgamate to create a ghostly atmosphere. At the furthest reaches of the exhibition space is a video work using text compiled from recollections made in the Line group chat which piece together events on the days leading up to his grandfather’s death. Confronting death is never easy, but through courage and this exhibition entitled “Confronting Memories”, the self and family experience healing through art.
About the Artist
WANG Ding-Yeh received his Meisterschule degree from the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden) in 2011. He is adept at using video installation and painting in his art to address issues concerning the self, society, and the environment. He believes that artistic creativity enables connections with, or resistance to the eternal society, while simultaneously healing the self. His work has been exhibited in Taiwan, the United States, Israel, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, and Malaysia.
