Text/ Chen Han-Sheng
Learn to say goodbye to family, it's never too late, but it always feels delayed; the feeling of being with the land is the same. It should be familiar, yet it's actually unfamiliar. Thinking that it's unfamiliar means not caring, but it's always on my mind, difficult to erase. I have been studying and working up north for six years now. Returning to my hometown to hold an exhibition, titled "Chen Mingfu," in order to commemorate a period of unfamiliar emotions with my grandfather.
My grandfather, Chen Mingfu, everyone called him "Shu Zai," was a farmer who spent his whole life in Dashe, Kaohsiung. After Shu Zai passed away, returning to the land where Fu Zai used to cultivate, scenes of childhood playfulness couldn't help but emerge. The ceramic shards occasionally found in the soil are a part of the memories. These shards were also a daily occurrence for Shu Zai when he was working the land. The agricultural tools that were once used every day are now quietly laid to rest in the workshop, no longer in use.
The blue and white ceramic shards symbolize the anonymous history that was forced to be insignificant and had to be self-erased. The idle agricultural tools have never truly gone on strike. Objects always evoke a method of creation that combines farming and art. If the agricultural tools were merely "tools" for Shu Zai, and the shards dug up during farming were obstacles to be removed when loosening the soil, for me, the agricultural tools are a means of resisting the land and engaging in dialogue. Perhaps these shards are the new land I need to cultivate again. Art should be a kind of labor, not lofty but precious, valuable, yet not without a price. Only then can art have the opportunity to go to the fields together with Shu Zai.
These unidentifiable blue and white ceramic shards and the agricultural tools that I can't bear to throw away but don't know how to handle, may still be indescribable after the exhibition ends. Through the exhibition, I hope to share this helpless yet intense indescribability.