Taipei in Bloom

The knitted work of E Chan is no stranger to Taiwanese audience as the Time Weave was exhibited once in 2006 Taipei Biennial Exhibition. The woolen work created a soft ambience and brought a novel, warm and joyous vision to the audience. The machine beside the artwork keep on removing the wool and the soft ambience is turning into a bundle of wool on the floor as the exhibition continues. This mixture of sweet and sour is E Chan’s way of remembering Taiwan as the previous Kingdom of Textile. The textile industry had its hay day and was once a major source of foreign exchange for Taiwan. As manufacturing became more and more globalized, together with the change of consumption structure, this once prosperous industry could not help but decline or even move to other countries with cheaper labor.

As a result, the works (with vine, flowers, birds and lamp pole showing at the windows of the store) exhibiting in the eastern international designer clothes store are better described as a contradiction of modernity and history, rather than a reproduction of natural scenery. It might be true that more different types of goods, more profound self-positioning standards and more internationally popular languages are available for us because of globalization. We can also be more trendy but we usually do not realize the damage, destruction and loss in this wave of globalization. Artists sometimes play a multiple roles of humanists, sociologists and historians, and touch the audience with the language of art. Through this impact of contradictions, the audience will be able to see the other side of the same coin. What we see may not be real and what has disappeared does not mean it never existed.