Yao Jui-Chung
Yao Jui-Chung | Taiwan b.1969 | (Untitled) (from 'Everything will fall into ruin' series) 1990–2009 | 8 black and white digital photographs; AP 1 | Gift of the artist through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2009 | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | © The artist
The Hand, the Eye & the Heart | 1 October 2011 — 12 February 2012 | GOMA | Free admission
Yao Jui-Chung has traversed Taiwan and its surrounding islands, taking and compiling hundreds of photographs of places abandoned as a result of social and economic development in modern Taiwan. The series ‘Everything will fall into ruin’ 1990–2009 brings together photographs grouped into four sets of ‘ruins’ – derelict sites of industry, abandoned civil dwellings, deserted military and prison infrastructure, and the refuse of statuary scattered throughout the countryside. These forgotten sites – destroyed, weathered, man-made yet devoid of human presence – are salient markers for shifts in power over time. In these photographs from the final group of ‘ruins’ we see abandoned theme parks littered with sculptures, along with discarded religious deities, suggesting both the reification of religious and commercial icons and the ravages of contemporary consumption and waste. The coexistence of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and capitalism in daily life has produced a visual clutter of discarded gods, faded hopes and material desires.
