蕭壠文化園區

Born in Taipei, Jia-ling Hsu earned her Bachelor Degrees from Department of Sociology and College of Law in National Taiwan University. She also has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with major in performance and image creation. Her works, embedded with dreams and memories, usually originate from materials of daily life through collecting experiences and imagination about “freedom” and “constraint” in the context of family, belief, and love. She specializes in employing bodies, spaces, words, objects, and voices to spell out unspeakable feelings by allowing perceptions to express themselves in a fragmented and open narrative on timelines.

In her end-of-residency exhibition ‘WHISPER OF HEART’, Hsu presented a feast in ‘tranquility’ to invite the audience to walk in, lingering around, standing, sitting, or lying down. The visitors are free to ‘feel’ the moment and let the unknown and imagination dance together. They can follow the leads and initiate dialogues between them and the performer in silence. Inspired by her father’s memory of riding a bike passing by Jiali Sugar Factory, Hsu created the scene of ‘The scent of sweetness’. As the performer boiled sugarcane syrup, dipping a spoon down into the syrup, and regularly making circles, the routinely cooking gestures were transformed into a sculpture-like ritual to demonstrate the usual ingredient until it boiled down to molasses. This project reproduced the sense of smell in memory and allowed the audience to closely witness the details of ‘qualitative change’.