Photographer Tsao Liang-pin founded the Lightbox Photo Library with a view to opening up a public space for Taiwanese photography so that everyone can enjoy equal access to this art. In parallel with Lightbox, Tsao’s recent work has been investigating the ways in which martyrs’ shrines impinge upon our sense of national identity. If Sojourn, a series of road photographs Tsao created while studying in the US, embodies his personal experience of rootlessness, then his photographs of martyrs’ shrines in Taiwan reconsider, interrogate, and deconstruct those officially shaped collective memories, and go on to explore new possibilities of commonality. In other words, whereas Lightbox represents a bottom-up process of archiving photographs for the Taiwanese people, Tsao’s own creative projects—through attention to enshrined national “heroes”—critique the state’s top-down attempt to construct a monolithic national identity.
Between the sacred and the secular: Imaginarium
Imaginarium is a series of photographs first exhibited at TKG+ in Taipei in 2018. Scattered across the exhibition room were shimmering lightboxes of various sizes. Like glimmerings of history, they invited us to gaze on the illuminated images. On one side of each lightbox was a photograph taken by Tsao at various martyrs’ shrines around Taiwan, depicting, for example, a group of cosplayers, a ceremonial archway, or some other architectural feature. The other side displayed vintage photographs of these shrines from Tsao’s collection.
Intriguingly, most of the historic photographs portray visitors to the shrines in a somber mood of respect. By contrast, Tsao’s modern pictures appear to be decontextualized, investing the old buildings with a sense of humor and even absurdity by alluding to consumerism, tourism, cosplay, and fashionable wedding photography. Tsao’s work aims to confront precisely these paradoxes and conflicts that beset martyrs’ shrines. The once solemn and sacred sites have been infiltrated by secular values. Imaginarium probes the vexed relationship and shifting boundaries between the sacred and the secular.
If, in the past, public perceptions of martyrs’ shrines as sacred sites were shaped by politics and the state, then our secular imagination—albeit seemingly liberated from the past—has also been determined by an external force: capitalism. Whereas the perceptions of our forebears were more or less visibly manipulated by authoritarian governments, the consumerist values that govern our lives today are less obvious. Imaginarium lays bare the forces that govern the ways we perceive martyrs’ shrines. Far from eulogizing these places, Tsao contemplates and problematizes them from a satirical and critical perspective.
As Ritual: Re-experiencing bowing
If Imaginarium draws on the conventions of reportage photography, adopting a critical and detached viewpoint to interrogate Taiwan’s national identity and imagination, then its sequel, As Ritual, addresses these questions through physical participation. At first glance, As Ritual reminds us of Chang Chao-tang’s self-portraits in Panchiao, Taiwan 1962, because both series of photographs feature headless subjects. Landscapes and buildings are shown where we expect to see the heads, as if the torsos are directly joined to their surroundings.
Despite superficial similarities, however, different historical contexts mean that significant conceptual differences exist between Panchiao, Taiwan 1962 and As Ritual. Chang’s work intimates disorientation, a deculturalized experiential moment, the absurdity of authoritarianism, and a historical process deprived of participatory subjects. His photographs bespeak existential nihilism. Tsao, on the other hand, critiques the ways in which moral codes force us to pay our respects to those who have sacrificed their lives for the country.
Though it can be motivated by genuine feelings, the act of bowing is sometimes nothing more than a political ritual. As Ritual shows a formally dressed Tsao bowing at various martyrs’ shrines. This is not merely reportage but the creative subject’s physical intervention. While superficially betokening a sincere expression of gratitude, Tsao’s bowing insinuates criticism and even irony. What do those “national heroes” celebrated by repressive governments of the past have to do with a country that has transformed itself into a democracy? We may indeed say that As Ritual suggests the hollow nature of bowing at martyrs’ shrines, and that Tsao attempts to deconstruct national myths by reenacting this political ritual.
A mercurial national identity
Through the images of martyrs’ shrines in Imaginarium and As Ritual, we may catch a glimpse of Taiwan’s complex history and of how that history has been perceived by the Taiwanese people. The historic shrines used to be integral to the authoritarian government’s ideological apparatus. In our own times, they have been co-opted by consumerism. People behave very differently in these places: a tiny few pay their tributes sincerely, while others look on the shrines as exotic backgrounds for their photographs. Whichever the case may be, Tsao reconsiders the Taiwanese people’s relationship with their history by means of reportage and physical participation. This dynamic relationship cannot be pinned down by any monolithic national mythology or unchanging sense of nationhood. Rather, Taiwan’s national identity is forever shaping itself among the people, always indefinable and mercurial.
Tainan Martyrs’ Shrine, 2017
Taoyuan Martyrs’ Shrine, 2017
Exhibition: Becoming / Taiwanese, 2018 This exhibition, whose Chinese name means “imaginarium,” featured large LED lightboxes displaying modern and historic images of martyrs’ shrines. Renouncing the linearity of conventional exhibitions, Tsao placed the lightboxes on the floor or suspended them in midair, to let visitors thread their way freely among the color and black-and-white images and discover clues and connections for themselves.
Miaoli Martyrs’ Shrine, 2020
