Charwei Tsai: “Entre pensamientos y palabras”

November 26 – December 22 of 2009

Galería Casas Riegner is pleased to present for the first time in Colombia, the work of Paris-based, Taiwanese artist Charwei Tsai.
The show, consisting of video installations and photographs, is a survey of her recent work. From 2005, the artist has been developing projects and series around the idea of impermanence, using different materials and techniques, which are themselves in constant evolution.

In the Heart Sutra series, the first operation of the artist consists in taking up organic, live materials to work on and so to allude to the inevitable passage of time and to the traces of natural cycles on living bodies. This acts as a comment on the idea of art as something that has to be preserved and collected, procuring the least possible alterations in its physical presence. Elaborating on this first issue, she superimposes the writing of the Heart Sutra, a sacred Mahayana Buddhist scripture, in these materials (mushrooms, octopus, frogs, lotus, tofu, sea shells), to then observe its natural, gradual decay.
Following the Sutra’s message, Tsai allows the texts to merge with the surfaces they’re written on, and at this moment she recreates the annulment of the duality of matter and mind. That is an evocation of the irrevocable interdependence of all the things of the universe in order to exist, that is, in order to constantly transform themselves.

Another variation of the scripture series is the “Meat Map” piece, where the artist reproduces the map of China in raw meat and writes on it with pig’s blood.
The text is the “One China Policy”, the propaganda of the Chinese government that advocates for the unification of the nation. With this gesture, Charwei tries to reflect on the consequences of a search for a nationalism in an emerging world power.
In a broader perspective, Tsai signals nationalism as a symptom of a contemporary distancing from the idea of a universal indissoluble unity, pursued by Buddhism and expressed in the Heart Sutra.

By means of the exploration of spirituality in her art practice, Charwei Tsai helps us reflect upon the events of reality with a specific filter, while transmitting universal messages.

Charwei Tsai was born in Taiwan in 1980 and currently resides between Paris, New York and Taipei. Apart from her art practice, she also publicizes a biannual magazine of contemporary art called Lovely Daze. Her work has been shown at Osage Gallery in Hong Kong, at Sora Gallery in Tokyo, at the 6ath Biennal of Art From Asia -Pacific in Queensland, Australia, at the Cartier Foundation and at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, among others.