Video installation: HD video projection with 3-channel sound system (19'52", loop, colour), HD video (6 min. 56 sec., loop, colour, silent) | 2019-20

Songs of Oblivion focuses on the unique singing tradition of Tao people – a small group of Taiwanese Aborigines native to a remote island of Taiwan called Lanyu (also known as Orchid Island), and refers to a shadowy part of the island’s history implemented by the post-war government of Taiwan.
Due to the extraordinary culture and tradition of Tao (with links to both Taiwanese Indigenous and Filipino people) and an off-limits policy on the island during the period of Japanese colonisation (1895-1945), Lanyu was considered as an ethnological research area and was primarily excluded from the social and political system of Taiwan. Yet in 1958, the Taiwanese government established Lanyu Farm – a correctional facility spread over the island that existed for decades until 1990. Up to 3000 prisoners/felons were successively sent there for forced labour as well as veterans as their prison guards. These unexpected immigrants were indeed excluded or rather ‘dumped’ by Taiwan’s postwar society and had to suffer from intensive physical labour and social isolation on the island. Their arrival also interrupted the traditional living conditions of the Tao people who had no choice but to confront cultural/social conflicts and even violent acts carried out by their new neighbours.
With her research on the traditional songs of the Tao people, that captured their narratives through poetry, the artist questions how personal experiences as well as collective knowledge is transformed through the act of singing. Furthermore, during the interviews with individuals who have witnessed the existence of the former Lanyu farm, certain auditory fragments gradually emerged from their memories, which could be an approach to reconstruct some cruel details of parts of the history of the island.
By juxtaposing forms of narration in combination with auditory and performative elements, Songs of Oblivions exposes the complexity of the relationship between history and collective memory, political incidents and emotions of individuals who had suffered in an unnoticed period of history.


Songs of Oblivion (2019-20)

Video Installation: HD video(20’30”), various found home decorations, painted wood construction; size variable | 2019

Through the subtle voice of a meditation instructor, the viewer is ushered into a soothing journey encompassing peaceful rituals of gardening, shedding lights on the artificiality of nature in different cultural and historical contexts. The artist juxtaposes various garden landscapes from China and Europe as well as the process of constructing a miniature Zen garden with diverse home decorations. While emphasising the mutual affection and at times a misconstruction of garden design with often stereotypical aesthetics and traditions, the video demonstrates the absurdity of the mimicking nature in decorative products.


The Serene Garden (2019)

HD video (21’04”, colour, with sound) | 2016

In the downtown area of Guwangju (Southkorea), parallel to the shopping streets filled with shops and restaurants, a well-known “wedding street” is located in the very city centre together with several evangelic churches and love motels in extraordinary, flashy designs. It is an unique city-scape, which perfectly demonstrates the juxtaposition between the emotional desire for sexuality and the responsibility for taking conventional roles, which are still expected by the society for both men and women.
At the other hand these two contradictory subjects are becoming consumable and emotions, as well as memories, can be apparently acquired and constructed by purchase. So what remains of feelings? Does romance still exist?
By slowly evolving the content, combined with documentary and narrative sequences, the artist chooses the perspective of a silent observer. Personal, partly fictional stories of women living in Gwangju are recounted in form of staged, anonymous interviews. An extra layer of text comments found online represents the superficial view of people, who meet their curiosity as a cultural adventure. These voices are without any attempt in considering the local social conditions.

Romance

Video installation: HD video projection (33’02”), rotating QR code object (Styrodur, plexiglas,
mirror ball motor), smart phone, 3D video (loop) | 2017-18

In Quick Code Service Hui Ye investigates the relationship between real and virtual spheres
of life. The artist (re-)constructs her own identity within the structures of WeChat, one of the
most important digital communication tools in contemporary China. Without being physically
present in the country, the artist asks her friends there to use the QR code – which
represents her person on WeChat platform – in different ways and thereby make her digital
identity a part of the Chinese social network. The work is an attempt to reintegrate in a
radically changed Chinese society after being absent for fourteen years and to overcome
alienation with digital means. Quick Code Service is a fictional video with a documentary
character.

Quick Code Service (2017-18)

Video installation: HD video (6’48”, loop), self-made cosmetics items in yellow, mirror lights, dressing table and chair | 2016

There are many makeup tutorial videos on YouTube to achieve the Asian beauty, a perfect appearance of “a female Asian gangster” (quoted from the exact word spoken by one of the YouTube makeup-tutor). In The full colour makeup session, Hui Ye imitates the whole process of makeup to get the same look of the Asian beauty, transforming herself into someone else, the ideals of the “Asian Baby Girl” that is projected on her Asian-looking body by others. Exaggerating the desire of pursuing the beauty, while connecting it with the whole process of racial construction, her video asks how the idea of beauty are constructed, gendered, sexualized and consumed in contemporary society.


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Hui Ye