The Ways to Water
Shih-Ying Hu
April, 2019 Portland, OR, U.S.
Videographer: Daniela Repas
April, 2019 Portland, OR, U.S.
Videographer: Daniela Repas
Ecology has something to do with Environment. In most of my works, I am speaking about humanity’s relationship to Nature by positioning and performing my body for an audience. By collaging and overlapping, I challenged my audience to identify and question divisions between their own bodies and the environment.
For example, in “Train Ecstasy” and “The Way to Water,” the assemblage of oil painting, cold objects like a TV screen or a seatbelt, and my fresh body becomes an environment that I welcome spectators into, to experience a scene full of weird and harmony. As a result of interacting with and denaturing the object’s natural quality, like embracing a sansevieria, a snake plant covered with condoms, the Nature on the contrary dehumanizes me. I become part of Nature because of my deprived humanity. I become environment itself. By introducing man-made elements into the natural objects (plants), they become me, and I become them, so that there is no differentiation between us. The objects come to be subject of myself owing to the fact that their unnatural qualities. When it comes to Ecology, I deeply agree with Timothy Morton when he says, Ecology is profoundly about coexistence… Human beings are each other’s environment.
For example, in “Train Ecstasy” and “The Way to Water,” the assemblage of oil painting, cold objects like a TV screen or a seatbelt, and my fresh body becomes an environment that I welcome spectators into, to experience a scene full of weird and harmony. As a result of interacting with and denaturing the object’s natural quality, like embracing a sansevieria, a snake plant covered with condoms, the Nature on the contrary dehumanizes me. I become part of Nature because of my deprived humanity. I become environment itself. By introducing man-made elements into the natural objects (plants), they become me, and I become them, so that there is no differentiation between us. The objects come to be subject of myself owing to the fact that their unnatural qualities. When it comes to Ecology, I deeply agree with Timothy Morton when he says, Ecology is profoundly about coexistence… Human beings are each other’s environment.