Cloacinae - Goddess of the Sewers – A Solo Exhibition by Serge Onnen is MOCA Studio’s first exhibition for the Spring of 2014 and also the 50th exhibition since the launch of the MOCA Taipei Art Street in 2008. With the mission of incorporating art into public spaces, MOCA Taipei continues to explore the connections between urban spaces and social developments through the means of contemporary art. This is also French artist Serge Onnen’s debut solo exhibition in Taiwan.
The modern day urban sewage system originates from ancient Rome’s urban development concept. The quality of a city’s sewage system is closely connected to its public health and standard of living, and representing the opposing dual qualities of being clean and dirty, Cloacinae was regarded as the goddess of the sewers in ancient Rome. Onnen uses the frequently neglected urban sewer as a metaphor, and with painting, animation, self-produced wall paper, light installation, sound, and other mixed media, his observations and views for the shifts in social structures under global political and economic impacts are presented, with in-depth investigation conducted on the various definitions that urban dwellers hold for the term “value”.
Creating animations with the nearly forgotten phenakistoscope, Onnen’s manuscripts are turned into individual frames for the animation, with the simple graphics transformed into amazingly rich visual effects. Likewise, the interactive installation, Kaleidoscopes, projects beautiful images of diverse patterns, which are derived from a penny. Ghosts is a mini theater that combines kinetic installation, everyday objects, live sounds, and lighting effects. Furthermore, the wallpaper used on the walls of the venue is also produced by the artist, with the pattern created with head portraits of people of different races and forming a fence that is silent yet powerful. The source behind his creative concept is the minute and often neglected everyday details, with his artworks inspiring the audience to closely observe and to comprehensively contemplate about life’s different aspects, including those that are personal to collective, sentimental to spiritual, and those of daily material concerns to macroeconomic structures, and the pure and clean compared to the dirty.
During the exhibition, a special performance will be held with the artist collaborating with other musicians for the live improvised performance of Cloacinae Shadow Figures, which is a production that integrates his recent study of the craft of Chinese shadow puppet. This exhibition at the MOCA Studio will also be extended to the Taipei Artist Village with the presentation of another performance.
*image (left)
© courtesy of the artist and Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei
