Cordelia Tam
Symbiosis · Resonance
Artist: Cordelia Tam and Matthew Tsang
Symbiosis · Resonance, 2019 installation, waste paper, bricks(found object), sand, LED light, video, sound (source: excerpt from Bunbun Theater Collection track 1)
dimensions variable
Taitung Indigenous Culture Center, Taiwan
We, two artists from Hong Kong, have come to Taitung again. In the midst of the turbulence at our home city, we reconnect with the county’s beautiful scenery and people. Through meeting many tribes and indigenous people during our stay, celebrating the harvest festival and going through an earthquake and a typhoon with them, we have deepened our understanding of this land and its people.
The work starts from where Hong Kong currently stands and shifts to the mesmerizing Taiwanese mountains and coasts, for audience to strike resonance with the glorious Pasbutbut and the local tribes’ co-existence with nature. A line of bricks abraded by the sea waves recorded the wrestle between human civilization and nature. The abrasion may be a sign of helplessness or a chance for communion. People, like sand, can break up too easily under adverse conditions, it is not easy to stay together on this land. The sand totem in the work speaks to the challenge to preserve their civilisation facing the pace of the modern world.