【Forum】 Re-understand the meaning of life

Introduction

Artists: Hsu Chun-Yu x Kusofiyah Nibuesa

Moderator: HO Yu-Kuan (Curator of Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts)

About the moderator, please find the link for your reference: https://tcaaarchive.org/artist/16278/

2:00 – 2:10 PM / Moderator introduces the artists

2:10 – 2:40 PM / Sharing: Hsu Chun-Yu

2:40 – 3:20 PM / Sharing: Kusofiyah Nibuesa

3:20 – 4:00 PM / Final discussion

Note: The final discussion might talk about the relation between life and politics, self and others and the concept of country and home in current society.

If you make an appointment to visit on Sept. 17, you can attend the lecture for free. Seats are limited, so please sit in early.

Speakers

Hsu Chun-Yu

Hsu Chun-Yu (b. 1996, Hsinchu) received a BFA from the Department of Material Arts and Design, and later, an MFA in Jewelry and Metal Arts from the Graduate Institute of Applied Arts, Tainan National University of the Arts. She now lives and works in Tainan.

Hsu is the recipient various honors and awards, including Young Artist Award (Selected; 2022), Tainan Fine Arts Exhibition (Tainan Award and First Prize in Three-dimensional Plastic Creation; 2021), Dadun Fine Arts Exhibition (Bronze Medal; 2021), National Fine Arts Exhibition (Bronze Medal; 2021), and the 22nd Huangsi Fine Arts Exhibition (Merit Award in Three-dimensional Craft; 2021). She has exhibited in various art institutions, among which are GALERIE PIERRE (Taichung), Tainan Cultural Center (Tainan), National Tainan Living Art Center (Tainan), MUMU Gallery (Tainan), National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (Taichung), and Changhua County Art Museum (Changhua).

Hsu make human the main subject of her creative work. In addition to the concrete images based on people she observes in everyday life, she also creates works that express her personal state of mind. Occasionally, some even embody abstract or metaphorical ideas. The intricate lines varying in thickness constitute the narrative threads in her creative work. The process of bending these lines – usually copper or iron wire – resembles a journey of organizing her relations with the external world. In college, she mostly concentrated on making works in the form of painting, which required her to use pliers to repeatedly wrap and fasten the wire. In graduate school, she started experimenting with large-scale and life-size works, using metal wires of different thickness to create more nuanced facial expression and folds. Meanwhile, she also started carrying recycled paper around to record everyday scenes as her material. She has also used techniques of forging to more unfetteredly depict her perspective and delineate the figures in her works in a neater and livelier manner.

Kusofiyah Nibuesa

Kusofiyah Nibuesa (b. 1992, Pattani, Thailand) received her BFA from the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Prince of Songkla University in 2015, and her MFA from the Faculty of Painting Sculpture and Graphic Arts, Silpakorn University in 2019. She now lives and works in Pattani in southern Thailand, and is a member of the artist collective, Muslimah Collective.

In 2015, Nibuesa was selected into the 6th “Young Artists Talent” project by the Royal Thai Consulate-General, Los Angeles. In 2019, she participated in the 65th National Exhibition of Art at Silpakorn University; and in the same year, she was invited to partake in the 15th Jogia Biennale as a member of Muslimah Collective. In 2018, she was featured in the first Bangkok Art Biennale. She has also exhibited at various art institutions, including the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Delmar Gallery (Sydney), Gajah Gallery (Singapore), the Ratchadamnoen Contemporary Art Center (Bangkok), the De’Lapae Art Space (Narathiwat, Thailand), and the Andaman Cultural Study Center (Krabi, Thailand).

Nibuesa’s hometown, Pattani in southern Thailand, is close to Malaysia, and has been inflicted by military conflicts as well as riots and violent assaults resulting from cultural, religious, and racial identity issues. As a member of the non-mainstream Malay Muslim community, a discriminatory experience in Bangkok several years ago made Nibuesa understand that southern Thailand is still trapped in people’s stereotypical impression and different perspective. She then became determined to reverse the so-called mainstream narratives of southern Thailand through her creative work by foregrounding people’s lifestyle and scenes of everyday life from her hometown. Drawing her inspiration from her childhood experience and memory of visiting traditional markets with her mother, Nibuesa places her emphasis on the vitality she has felt from different communities as well as the connections and harmonious coexistence between them. She uses photographs she has taken as the material for her creative work, and her medium is mainly cardboard, which she puts through a process of cutting, stenciling, dying, puncturing, and weaving. When making her work, Nibuesa also incorporates other materials, such as tissue paper and mangosteen peel, to produce different texture and color tones.

Kao Kuan-Chun