Art as a bridge

Yao was a student at the National Institute of the Arts, today’s Taipei National University of the Arts, when Taiwan broke free from decades of martial law in 1987. He believed the fall of the old system would open new doors and pave the way for the country to right its wrongs. Yao says he was hopeful that the end of martial law would lead to the downfall of “oppressive regulations such as Article 100 of the Penal Code” that were designed to prevent “civil disturbances.” Taboos surrounding the creation of art about politics and religion were being erased. The trend of social liberalization, Yao believes, allowed art in Taiwan to become a bridge between all aspects of life.

Wu Chieh-hsiang, an associate professor in the Department of Art at National Changhua University of Education, says she believes Yao is one of the most influential and creative artists of his generation not simply because of his talent, but also his unstoppable drive to question the merits of political, historical and artistic developments. Wu, also a board member and former president of the Association of the Visual Arts in Taiwan, says she admires Yao for his ability to create, review, theorize and curate, resulting in artworks covering “a great diversity of genres, materials and subjects with unprecedented originality.”

In the 1990s, after Yao graduated from college and completed his compulsory military service, he focused on performance and installation arts, which were gaining in popularity at the time. In 1997, he was selected to co-represent Taiwan at the Venice Biennale art exhibition with his 1994 installation work Military Takeover, which casts a sarcastic look at recurring power shifts in Taiwan’s history. In the work, Yao presents himself in sepia-toned photographs, standing naked while urinating at six locations along the Taiwanese coast. He chose sites in Keelung, New Taipei City and Tainan where incoming powers had arrived since the 1620s from the Netherlands, Spain, mainland China and Japan to occupy the island. Paired with each photograph was a gold-leaf-covered toilet.

Small Landscapes II: Mao Swimming Ink and gold leaf on paper, 2015 130 x 130 cm

Action beyond dimensions

Military Takeover marked the beginning of Yao’s “Action” series, which he created to take on modern political myths, as well as to tackle issues of local identity for people in Taiwan. Other pieces in the series included Recovering Mainland China (1997), The World is for All (2000) and Long March (2002), as well as three video works released in 2007. Long March refers to the grueling retreat of Communist forces during the mid-1930s as they were pursued by the Nationalist army. Yao says the piece not only illustrates the bloody strife between the Nationalists and Communists, but highlights a series of events that “shaped the future of China.” The artist took photographs of himself doing handstands at important locations along the line of retreat to impart a sense of what he calls “shifting the universe,” which is another name for the work. “He positions himself as a symbol that cuts across history at specific places and times, exposing the real yet absurd existence of human beings,” Wu says.

In 2014, Yao was again selected to represent the nation at the Venice Biennale, this time in its architecture section. The artist presented 23 black-and-white photographs of dilapidated sites and structures that he had visited around Taiwan and its offshore islands since the early 1990s, together with a video work concerning a 1970 riot by political prisoners in Eastern Taiwan’s Taitung County. The photographs were grouped into seven sections to form a series called The Space that Remains. The structures presented in the photographs, broken and beaten into submission by time and the elements, are located in areas such as an Aboriginal community in Southern Taiwan’s Pingtung County, an abandoned mining site in New Taipei City, and an aging village on the outlying Penghu Islands. For Yang Wen-i, an associate professor at National Taiwan University of Arts in New Taipei City, Yao’s obsession with derelict buildings reveals an entangled, mysterious relationship between people and their environment. “All ruins are viewed from a personal point of view that is neither journalistic, nor documentary, nor voyeuristic,” Yang stated in her introduction to the Venice exhibition. “What Yao offers are enigmatic, ambiguous, sad, speechless and hurt buildings.”

Small Landscapes II: Peace of Mind Ink and gold leaf on paper, 2015 130 x 130 cm

Works of one’s own

The biennial series was not Yao’s first foray into a world of crumbling edifices. In 2010, when he was a part-time instructor in the Department of Fine Arts at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, he launched the Lost Society Document project, which was conducted mainly by students at the university. Yao asked his class to go back to their hometowns and survey, photograph and write about dilapidated buildings, or “mosquito houses,” such as community centers, gymnasiums, markets or parking lots built by the government and left idle. He says that in addition to highlighting the problem of wasting money on improper construction projects, paying attention to ruins and unused buildings represents a reflection on convention, as they are “unorthodox, forgotten and marginal structures.”

The results of this educational experiment, as Yao calls it, were published in a four-part book series titled Mirage: Disused Public Property in Taiwan. The four-year project was selected from a pool of 105 artworks to become one of 15 finalists for last year’s Asia Pacific Breweries Foundation Signature Art Prize, a triennial award established in 2008 by the foundation and the Singapore Art Museum. Mirage received the highest number of public votes and won the People’s Choice Award at the event. It was a remarkable achievement.

Since 2007, Yao has focused on creating his own format of landscape painting by reforming the traditional Chinese ink painting methodology. Instead of using brushes and rice paper, the standard implements for an ink painter, Yao uses oil or water-based marker pens to reproduce classical landscape painting masterpieces on handmade paper imported from India. He then fills in the background with gold leaf. The artist will sometimes insert a dialogue box or an image of a computer screen window, further blurring the lines between classical ink paintings and the paradigms of the modern world. He describes his style as “gold and green landscapes,” suggesting a brightly colored format of Chinese landscape painting distinct from the literati tradition that featured minimal use of color.

Small Landscapes II: Maple Gorge Ink and gold leaf on paper, 2015 130 x 130 cm

Old is new

In Chinese art history, the literati style, which focuses on personal expression over literal detail, was usually considered a higher form of art than any of the more ornamental varieties produced by professional painters.

Presented at his solo exhibition at the Tina Keng Gallery in Taipei City’s Neihu District, which was held from September to November 2015, Yao’s piece Brain Dead Travelogue presents a look back at ten of his major performance art projects of the past two decades in Taiwan and mainland China, while Life Is But a Dream displays eight significant moments in the artist’s life, such as his marriage and the birth of his two daughters. Both works are facsimiles of landscape painting classics from the Song Dynasty (960–1279), a period noted for its artistic accomplishments. “I rarely rely on random inspiration,” Yao notes. “My creations are usually based on prior study or a restructuring of an original text.”

Commenting on Yao’s signature style of mimicking landscapes, Wu Chieh-hsiang says that his methods of challenging traditional ink aesthetics provide an approach to confront an enormous legacy without feeling overwhelmed in the process. “Yao’s works are both historical ironies and personal biographies,” Wu says. “As an artist with such a broad historical perspective, he can blend his personal style with established methods in order to manipulate cultural traditions.”

Yao represented Taiwan at the 1997 Venice Biennale with the installation work Military Takeover.

Yao says his efforts are part of a larger reformation of ink painting that began in Taiwan in the late 1950s. Successive waves of change reimagined the art form until the mid-2000s, when artists began to view centuries-old techniques as a platform on which to create something new. “Handwork is again highly valued,” he says, pointing to the re-emergence of painting as a major genre of art.                                                                    

In 2014, Yao was again selected to represent Taiwan at the Venice Biennale.

Flower Forever: Spring Comes Ink, oil and gold leaf on canvas, 2013 100 x 100 cm

Flower Forever: One Plum Ink, oil and gold leaf on canvas, 2013 100 x 100 cm

Yao’s Mirage—Disused Public Property in Taiwan won the People’s Choice Award at the 2014 Signature Art Prize.

Good Times: Spring Breeze Ink and gold leaf on paper, 2014 198 x 82 cm

Life Is But a Dream Ink and gold leaf on paper, 2015 474 x 321 cm