Li Shu-chen "Landscapes Are Not Landscapes: People and Things Radiating Their Own Light" Solo Exhibition

Text/Photos by Chen Chi-Hsiang. Dates: February 17 to March 20. Location: Warehouse No. 4, Jiayi Railway Art Village exhibition space.

"Time, at first glance, seems boundless... In exploring childhood, I saw consciousness gradually awakening, like flashes coming one after another. The intervals between flashes gradually narrowed, finally becoming a large, bright area where memory lingers in this slippery place."

Vladimir Nabokov (Note 1)

Li Shu-chen's story begins with a quote from Kafka: "...my story is a way of closing my eyes" (Note 2). This is an exhibition full of local sentiment and personal family awareness. Amidst the changing eras and shifts in social and natural environments, she explores the secret codes of her homeland's memories through her identity. In this era of globalization, where nature changes alongside the times, the landscape of existence flows with the environment and personal consciousness. Li Shu-chen weaves a symphony of existential memories using the people, land, nature, and climate of her homeland, expressing her life's poetry through artistic writing.

The mood of a traveler in the human world is depicted as follows: "If you are about to collapse, seeking the scent of childhood memories, I am your earth, carrying all sorrow and love, facing the fading of spiritual light. Please close your eyes and fly together; then ecstasy sings in the deep silence." "Secret thoughts, wild as rain, quietly fall upon the landscape of my hometown." "Sometimes memory slips into the cracks of time, hiding from a northwest rain. The air is wet, I am cold. You wander in the distant mountains, returning like a traveler home, wildly falling. Clouds since ancient times have brewed how many worldly affairs? Grazing the rain on the mountains, the roads of rain, the lagoons of rain, the rivers of rain, the plains of rain, high mountains and valleys, steep ridges and gorges. The secrets of rain are always arrogant, sometimes falling upon the landscape of my hometown. I am the damp, cold returnee; you are forever the free-spirited passerby." (Note 3)

Note 1: Referenced from the press release for Li Shu-chen's solo exhibition "Landscapes Are Not Landscapes: People and Things Radiating Their Own Light." Notes 2-3: Referenced from the text inscribed on the artworks.