Yao Jui-chung
Yao Jui-chung | Everything will fall into ruin (detail) 1990–2009 | Black and white digital photograph, AP 1 | 100 x 150cm | Gift of the artist through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2009 | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
b.1969, Taipei, Taiwan
Lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan
Yao Jui-chung’s practice explores the complex construction of Taiwanese culture, including its entanglement with Cold War ideology during the martial law period of 1948–87, the country’s successful embracing of capitalism and the concurrent effects of multinationalism. APT6 will feature a major group of Yao’s evocative black-and-white photographs of destroyed, abandoned and weathered buildings, sculptures of religious idols and military structures from Taiwanese islands. These works form part of an ongoing project that considers the idea of an ‘aesthetics of ruin’ marking the rise and fall of power over time and, as the artist puts it, probes ‘the absurdity of the historical destiny of humanity’.
Exhibitions (solo): Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, 2006. Exhibitions (group): ‘Spectacle: To Each His Own’, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan, 2009; Yokohama Triennale, Japan, 2005; Taiwanese Pavilion, 47th Biennale of Venice, Italy, 1997. www.yaojuichung.com
