Tsai Pou-Ching: Specimen of Empire: Museum

Following the end of the Pacific War in 1945 and the regime change in Taiwan, specimens in various museums were scattered, even abandoned, some without documentation. However, specimens are commodities of purpose. When this purpose no longer prevails, their suspended will and desires become an embarrassing existence. With the process of modernization, their bodies are assigned representatives of species. How should we regard and understand these dispersed and lost specimens? This exhibition strives to communicate and collaborate with them through non-scientific methods of science and history, enabling the specimens to become themselves beyond science, beyond empire, and beyond history.

Born in Chiayi in 1986, Tsai Pou-ching lives and works in Tainan. Building on his fondness for animals since childhood, Tsai’s recent work attends to human-animal relationships through his study of amateur biology. The artist utilizes video, installation, and archives to consider and create unprecedented connections in response to our contemporary survival modes and progressively complex relationships with animals.