2006 One Thousand Year Bloom , Taipei Fine Arts Museum The first version of E Chen’s work One Thousand Year Bloom was unveiled in 2005 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in the United States. The artist portrays the special desert flora of California through the technique of three-dimensional yarn weavings. The concept of the entire work originates from the Taiwanese textiles industry, which once earned a large amount of foreign exchanges but now is a sunset industry. The fall of Taiwanese textiles seems to be evidence of the changes in the structure of manufacturing that Taiwan is experiencing under the influence of globalization. These changes are the source of infinite grief, but also prompt reflection on the position Taiwan occupies within the phenomenon of globalization.
The 2006 version of One Thousand Year Bloom, presented at the Taipei Fine Art Museum, carries on from the previous work by creating large saguaro cactuses of the California desert woven from yarn. Yet it also adds objects from the environs of E Chen’s studio in the United State. During the exhibition, every three-dimensional object of yarn, made from a single continuous thread, will be slowly pulled apart over time, and by the end of the exhibition, the shapes of those objects will gradually unravel, returning to their original forms as piles of yarn…One Thousand Year Bloom is a deeply meaningful expression of the theme of the transformation of matter: the work begins as raw material, becomes a finished product and finally returns to the state of raw material. This also reflects how objects produced through human labor are actually like the operational methods of multinational corporations in the context of globalization-first engaging in labor-intensive exploitation in marginal countries, and then selling new high-value products throughout the world…The final deconstruction of the work is a symbolic criticism of the globalized capitalist world.
Secondly, while E Chen grieves at the demise of the Taiwanese textiles industry, yarn has also become his material for retracting memories or reflecting on the Taiwanese historical experience. What this material weaves together are the familiar objects of California where he now lives. The California landscape and Taiwanese experience have formed the structure of his life’s memories. The interchange between the two also forms a bridge to his thoughts on personal identity, produced by the juxtaposition of different places and different scenes. ( Curated by Jun-Jieh Wong and Dan Cameron)
The 2006 version of One Thousand Year Bloom, presented at the Taipei Fine Art Museum, carries on from the previous work by creating large saguaro cactuses of the California desert woven from yarn. Yet it also adds objects from the environs of E Chen’s studio in the United State. During the exhibition, every three-dimensional object of yarn, made from a single continuous thread, will be slowly pulled apart over time, and by the end of the exhibition, the shapes of those objects will gradually unravel, returning to their original forms as piles of yarn…One Thousand Year Bloom is a deeply meaningful expression of the theme of the transformation of matter: the work begins as raw material, becomes a finished product and finally returns to the state of raw material. This also reflects how objects produced through human labor are actually like the operational methods of multinational corporations in the context of globalization-first engaging in labor-intensive exploitation in marginal countries, and then selling new high-value products throughout the world…The final deconstruction of the work is a symbolic criticism of the globalized capitalist world.
Secondly, while E Chen grieves at the demise of the Taiwanese textiles industry, yarn has also become his material for retracting memories or reflecting on the Taiwanese historical experience. What this material weaves together are the familiar objects of California where he now lives. The California landscape and Taiwanese experience have formed the structure of his life’s memories. The interchange between the two also forms a bridge to his thoughts on personal identity, produced by the juxtaposition of different places and different scenes. ( Curated by Jun-Jieh Wong and Dan Cameron)
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