Gazing the sea ang waves in Taishan Village

Preface

For people on the mainland, the island, which hangs south of the sea, is the tropical frontier of desolation and relegation, also an exotic place with fragrant woods and birds, affluent pearls and flora. Seamounts, coconut groves, fishermen, treasures even pirates form the fancy legends about this island. Although the Han people have been settling in enclaves on Hainan known as “Zhu Ya” since the Han Dynasty, the Li, Yao, Dan, Miao, Hui people, even the early aboriginal and transients with Thai-speaking languages have already lived there. The complex movement of ethnic group is difficult for people used to a land-based mindset to imagine what kind of daily life is really experienced on the rough and stormy islands.

Initially, when I heard Weng Fen talk about his island rural project, I was also filled with curiosity and sense of unfamiliarity. For contemporary art creation, islands and oceans are indeed chaotic fields of imagination and creativity. As he recounted the traditional rural life and folk rituals of the island, I have perceived a resemblance to the stories that I heard in the fields of western Guangdong and Fujian. He then took out his family genealogy, the preface on which reads that his ancestors "moved from Putian to Hainan during the reign of Emperor Shaoxing in the Song Dynasty (1131-1162)" that proves my judgment. Weng also mentioned the identity dilemma encountered by his daughters due to their inability to access genealogical records, and his “self-consciousness” of his hometown have sprout since 2007. Gradually, his artistic practice and visual works which have lasted for years, have effectively brought me into the field of his problems.

"Gazing the sea and waves in Taishan Village" is a stone carving on the fence of Weng's old family house in Taishan Village, Wenchang City, Hainan. Besides, the article entitled "Taishan Ode", tells the life experience of the Weng’s family in Taishan Village for more than 600 years since they migrated together during the Southern Song Dynasty. “Digging drains and draining floods, reclaiming the land”, “Fishing in the sea, raising livestock”, "The land swept by typhoons and the devastation", "Starting from scratch when winter comes and spring comes", these historical and realistic existences become the best footnote to understand his series of photographs "sitting on the wall" and "Staringing at the sea" like a code. A potential and silent viewer emerges from behind these photographs, even as I believe extremely wide-ranging perspectives and infinite skyline in his works are a visual habit of gazing endless seas on the island life since childhood. The retreat of nature and infinite encroachment of man-made objects in his works allow viewers to feel the plight of people who live on islands that they have nowhere to retreat. Due to the construction of a satellite launch center, half of Taishan Village have been requisitioned just like space colonization has shrunk the earth into an island. Villagers feel a more real, hopeless sense of urgency and instinctively look for a focus in turbulent nothingness.

Weng Fen's creation ranges from painting to photography, installation, video and even participatory art practice, while the medium merely a way for him to express thoughts. This exhibition is more like a flashback story, presenting his photographic and in situ art projects on the disappearance of rural homes since 2007. Focusing on "heaven, earth, sea, human and god", it records his clan's disorientation at the possible dissipation of their ancestral spirits, powerlessness and silence about the expansion of modern cities, concerns and questions about the inequitable conditions of living beings on the island. In addition to documentation and expression, Weng's family weave nearly lost coconut coir mats, make hand-blended black coffee and Weng's Hainanese chicken rice, which was brought from Hainan to Singapore and then passed on to his homeland. The transition of these moving objects in surrounding area is isomorphic with the historical story of immigrants. In the exhibition, Weng elaborately constructed part of his homeland, hoping the images, videos, plants, animals and minerals from Hainan will serve as a prequel to his past works, documenting his observations and reflections on uncertainty over the years. Three years into the epidemic, the world is unpredictable and everyone is like living on some kind of isolated island. Between the ebb and flow of the tide, gazing the sea and waves is not only a daily part of family 's heritage, but also a straightforward way of imagining the future.

 By Chen Xiaoyang