Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF), Paddington in association with the National Art School Gallery (NAS), Darlinghurst presents work by two pre-eminent Taiwanese artists, Chien-Chi Chang and Chen Chieh-jen.

SCAF presents a newly commissioned immersive installation Realm of Reverberations by Chen Chieh-jen. The installation comprises four major filmic artworks focusing on the Losheng Sanatorium construction site in Taiwan. The artist has invited four very different women to share their unique connection to the Sanatorium and subsequent displacement from this ‘home’. These audio components are also presented in small wooden wagons, distinct vignettes that come aurally alive in the small spaces, forcing audiences to lie down or be seated. The short films are complemented by four audio interviews with marginalised women that visit The Wayside Chapel in Potts Point, Sydney, who also share their personal experiences on the theme of ‘home’. The same stories, re-envisaged by the artist, shall be presented within SCAF’s Culture+Ideas programme as a full length screening- please join our mailing list for screening times as they are confirmed.

NAS Gallery exhibits three works by Chien-Chi Chang, an internationally-respected Magnum photographer fascinated by the human conditions of alienation and connection. His work focuses on people whose bonds to society, family and community have been severed. The powerful photographic series The Chain (1993-1999), is a collection of 45 portraits of inmates in a mental asylum in Taiwan. Chained together in pairs, mentally impaired inmates of a so-called (Buddhist) sanctuary (which, in reality, operates commercially as a huge chicken farm manned by unpaid workers) face the viewer. Dressed in the poorest of ill- fitting garments, bent over or proudly upright, these members of a usually unseen community symbolise the human condition at its most elemental. In a new work commissioned by SCAF, Side Chain (1993-2014) more deeply explores Chang’s connections with the Lung FaTang Temple and its patients more widely. This is presented alongside China Town (1992-2011) which brings our attention to the plight of illegal Chinese immigrants to New York whose living conditions and decades-long exile makes us shudder in shame at the comfortable lives we enjoy.

*image (left)
© Chen Chieh-jen
courtesy of the artist