In dialogue
Emily Wilson in conversation with Abby Chen curator of contemporary art at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum
Yuan Goang-Ming, known as the ‘father of Taiwanese video art,’ chose Abby Chen, the curator of contemporary art at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum to curate his presentation at the 2024 Venice Biennale, Everyday War. In the Palazzo Priccioni, a space that once served as a prison, his videos and installations poetically examined the unease of contemporary life, in works such as Dwelling, which presents an explosion in a living room, and Everyday Maneuver, showing the empty streets of Taipei during an air raid drill.
The presentation garnered praise at the 60th Biennale, and now Chen and Yuan have brought a slightly expanded version of Everyday War to the Asian Art Museum, where it is on view through August 4th. I attended on the packed opening night, where scores of people turned up to see the videos and hear a talk with Chen and Yuan. I wanted to ask Chen about Yuan’s work and why people responded to it so strongly. When we met at the museum, she talked about watching a video of Yuan’s over and over at Japan’s Mori Museum, why Yuan chose her for a curator, and how even though Yuan’s work represents the anxiety and unease that increasingly is felt in a lot of the world, it is still is full of hope.
When did you first see Yuan’s work?
The very first time I encountered his work was in a group show in a big survey in Taiwan. A few pieces there left a strong impression with me and that included his video sculpture.
But the real encountering of the work was during COVID, around 2020 in Japan at the Mori Museum. I went there to see a different show. They had a small acquisition show, and I went to see what they had recently acquired. It was this video piece, The 561st Hour of Occupation [a video paying homage to students who took over the Taiwanese parliament in 2014], and I totally was not prepared. I did not read the label, and I walked in without any preparation. I sat down, and it was on the screen. I started crying, and I used my phone to record it. I guess someone in the audience went to tell the security that someone is recording it. then the security came in and saw me, and she was very kind. She clearly told me in Japanese, “You cannot record.” I put the phone down, and I continued to cry. My husband was looking at other things, and he came in and saw me crying. He sat in the back and watched it. Then he left and I continued to sit there, and I don’t know how many loops I watched. He came back again to look at me, and then he left again.
I still feel this way watching his work — that something unspeakable in you gets identified, located, confronted, and then placed. In all his videos, he is able to help you pack and unpack all these feelings, just the way his camera moves. His aesthetic is symmetrical and very centered. It has this kind of a scanning effect, almost like you’re scanning your mind as well.
Did you immediately want to work with him?
At the time, I think I was so overwhelmed by the work I didn’t know what to do with it. I was preparing for After Hope, and I went on Facebook to post my feeling about the piece and tagged him. I asked him to be in After Hope, and he said he was happy to be part of this exhibition, but we didn’t meet until I got to Venice to do the site visit, but of course we talked a lot before that. When I asked him to be part of After Hope, he quickly agreed, and he said he was happy to be part of this exhibition, and that it was a strong exhibition.
How did you end up curating the exhibition at the Biennale?
Starting last year, Taiwan asked the artist to pick the curator though they still make recommendations to them. Yuan was given a long list, largely with European curators, more academic, which I think it also makes sense to that Taiwan wants to have somebody who knows about the landscape in the art world in Europe.
He wanted to look for somebody who really understand the geopolitical situation in Asia and its relationship with the world. My name was part of the list that he had. He asked his wife, who is an amazing writer, art historian and researcher, and she started to research all of the list, and then somehow saw that in a talk, I mentioned that in terms of the narrative around Chinese contemporary art, artists from Taiwan or Hong Kong, are all on the periphery. So with that, he was like, “I want this person.” That’s what he told me.
In spite of the intense subject matter, you’ve said you find his work hopeful. Why is that?
I feel that watching his work, because of its aesthetics and poetry, creates this channel for us to travel through. By sitting there, we actually feel heard, understood, and also helped because of his ability to articulate what lies deeply inside of us that we don’t even know sometimes. We probably know that something is hovering there, but we couldn’t articulate it the way that he does, exactly, so it’s almost therapeutic that it gets to that spot and it uncovers it and allows you to actually treat it, and then help you place it because you actually don’t know where to put it, whether it’s anger, anxiety, sadness, excitement, all of it, you don’t know how to treat it. But he dissolves it right in front of you. So, in a way it magnifies this fear, but at the same time, by his explosion, he helps you dissolve it.
An audience member after seeing the whole show, said to me, “I actually struggled to bring myself to see this show because just reading the name, I felt like I’m going to get depressed, but I still wanted to come to see this. I was very surprised that when I came out, I felt so energized. So why?” “He asked me, and I did not think about it until he asked me. The experience was very similar when I was in Venice because in Venice I continued to get text messages from people I knew that were happened to be there, from Asia or different places. They start texting me, telling me “Abby, I’m just seeing this right now and this is so powerful.” Then at this show in San Francisco, I got messages from my friends, but I have to read this to you because it means a lot to me. I got this from a young filmmaker: “I visited the Everyday War show yesterday, and I was blown away. This is how we display video in the real world. One million feelings without one word said at all.”
I think his aesthetic, his ability, and the maturity of handling this tough material really allows us to be, what’s the word? Imbued with soft power, the true soft power, combating all the hard power that is currently surrounding us, whether it’s cyber-attack, climate change,
political oppression, inequality, racial injustice, all this hard power. This soft power allows us to dig deep into our own mind and gain strength to deal with this.
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About the writer: Emily Wilson is a writer in San Francisco with work in outlets including the Smithsonian.com, Hyperallergic, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, California Magazine, San Francisco Classical Voice, Artsy, Women’s Media Center, and the Observer. For years she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco. She hosts the podcast, Art is Awesome.
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