Artist Statement

​

Faces of Sadness is a media installation that contemplates the multifaceted nature of Taiwanese identity. Drawing primarily from Hou Hsiao Hsien’s 1989 film A City of Sadness and the 1947 February 28 Incident, an anti-government uprising brutally suppressed, the work gazes back at history from a contemporary perspective. Through the repetition and juxtaposition of media, time, and language, it seeks to disenchant the often neglected cultural complexity underlying Taiwanese identity, revolving around the persistent questions: Where are you from? Where are you going?—an exclamation of the continuing conundrum facing an immigrant society.

As an island where immigrants of disparate ethnic origins have long converged, Taiwan is shaped by the interplay of many languages and cultures. From Taiwanese Hokkien to Zhejiang accent Mandarin and Japanese, these voices and their frictions have never ceased to influence the island’s shifting identity. Within this ambiguous flow of cultural impressions, adaptations, and accommodations resides a spectrum of hybrid personas, forged in the margins of empires. This installation attempts to listen closely to the conversations among these tongues, to uncover the conflicts and correspondences they form, and to re-evaluate the current condition of Taiwanese through their entangled cultural resonances.

To respond to the evolving relationship between past and present, the work engages with three key temporal moments: 1947, 1989, and the present. These moments in time mark pivotal shifts in the Taiwanese imaginary, points during which the awareness of autonomy and identity came into sharp focus. By juxtaposing these eras, Faces of Sadness reveals the lingering shadows of history and the obscured identities formed under successive Japanese and Chinese regimes. Even as the phrase “I am Taiwanese” finds broad agreement among citizens today, it remains haunted by a specter, an unsettled presence, a sorrow inflicted from the past that continues to dwell deep in the heart of the island.

The installation centers on the duplicated image of Hong Kong actor Tony Leung, reframed from a key scene in A City of Sadness, a film that orients its narrative around the 228 Incident. The scene was repeatedly reshot, tracing Tony Leung’s face as it moves across the silver screen. Through numerous takes, each performing seemingly identical camera movements, the artist’s gestures are translated into inquiries. While nuances are exposed through exhaustive repetitions, questions about what affinities and differences remain that can define and distinguish the aspects of a “Taiwanese.” What does it mean to bear that identity today, in a land still negotiating the aftermath of occupation and the complexities of nationhood?

In its final refrain, the work underscores the impossibility of arriving at simple answers. The questions that open the piece, Where are you from? Where are you going?, echo unresolved through generations. The difficulty lies not only in the proclamation I am Taiwanese, but in the effort to explain the historical and political context that gives it meaning. To evoke this struggle, the installation embraces a process of translation across media and time. Using 16mm Kodak 7222 monochromatic film, each frame is reshot from a DVD copy of A City of Sadness, itself originally captured on 35mm color stock. This excessive translation through various media distorts and distances the image, detaching it from its origin. In this spectral transfer, the face becomes an echo, an image suspended between clarity and erasure. Wandering through the veils of time, it emerges with a voice both muted and persistent, calling forth a confrontation with the entangled layers of history and identity that shape what it means to be Taiwanese.

Amid rising global tensions surrounding migration, displacement, and contested belonging, the work asks whether questions of identity, memory, and place might resonate far beyond Taiwan. Might the search for self also be a thread woven through the lives of those shaped by histories of movement and change? In evoking these reflections, Faces of Sadness becomes not only a meditation on Taiwanese identity, but also a mirror of broader, entangled experiences of dislocation and becoming. It invites viewers not only to witness the fragments of a fractured past, but to sense the lingering presence of what remains unspoken. Through media’s dislocations and reverberations, the installation becomes a space for mourning and contemplation, reimagining the quiet insistence that the question of identity, though elusive, must still be asked.