KÜNSTLERHAUS

BETHANIEN

Künstler*innen

Chia-Wei Hsu

Taiwan

Marshal Tie Jia - Turtle Island, 2012, 6'30'', one-channel HD video, one photography 120 cm × 80 cm, two documents

Chia-Wei Hsu´s artistic practice relies on a specific kind of narrative – a way of documenting that interferes with reality by focusing on particular, site-specific characteristics pertaining to memory, imagination or identification. In recent years, Hsu has focused on forgotten histories of the Cold War in Asia. His works betray an acute sensitivity that weaves together reality and illusion, history and the present, and thus constructs a network of events, people and places in the hors-champ of traditional history. Using an anthropological approach, he shows to what extent the multilayered structures of the past still influence the present, and by doing so, questions the rationale of national identification. To a certain extent, the similarity between the places he investigates and his native country allows the artist to sketch the outlines of Taiwanese subjectivity.