Chi-Wen Gallery is delighted to present “Human-Cannabis, Jigoku, Singing Winds”, a solo show by Taiwanese artist Jawshing Arthur Liou. The exhibition showcases three series of video and film created in 2020, Human-Cannabis II: ASA (2020), Jigoku series (2020) and House of the Singing Winds (2020).

Human Cannabis II: ASA

Inspired by the ancient worship of hemp in Japan, Human-Cannabis II: ASA (2020) is a memorial of the plant’s cultural heritage, enduring spiritual connections, and untold histories. The film depicts a story of a medieval hemp farmer, his relationship to the crop, and memories of a young girl. The first-person narration combines elements of poetry and fiction as one of Jawshing Liou’s first attempts to broaden his visual work into text-based expression.

Liou’s interest with cannabis stemmed from a 2012 collaboration with Dr. Alex Straiker, a research scientist at Indiana University in the U.S. Their discussion centered around human brains’ ability to produce close equivalence of THC and CBD, known substances from cannabis plants. These substances are responsible for a wide range of cognitive functions including the ability to learn and to forget. The result of their collaboration was a 4-channel video, Human-Cannabis I: Sonnet 27—featuring a prehistoric encounter between human and cannabis. The images in the video suggest a primordial force both in nature and in our minds. It is a journey of someone’s memories both of a child and as a child, blurred between the lines of remembering and forgetting.

As Liou turns his attention to the world’s cannabis history and culture, he discovers the beautiful and mysterious hemp tradition in Japan. In the Shinto coronation ceremony (Daijōsai), the emperor wears a hemp robe and receives an offering of hemp as a symbolic domain of the plant realm and silk as the animal realm. Hemp rope, paper, and fiber could be seen strung around Shinto temples and spiritual sites. Human-Cannabis II: Asa portrays hemp as a religious medium for the supernatural. The unsettled timeline is a metaphor for the mirrored images between illusion and reality, a notion of life that continues to be the main course of Liou’s work.

Jigoku Series

Jigoku (2020) is a series of landscape videos of geothermal sites in Kyushu, Japan. Many of them are based in Beppu, a small town with over 2900 hot spring vents. Eight of these hot springs are renowned for the dramatic physical appearance and are named Jigoku, a Japanese word for “Hell.” Those included in the series are “Blood Hell” (Chinoike Jigoku), “Sea Hell” (Umi Jigoku), “White Pond Hell” (Shiraike Jigoku), and “Ghost Buddhist Monk Hell” (Oniishi Bozu Jigoku). Mount Aso, the largest active volcano in Japan, is located just 100km in the southwest of these hot springs. With the influence of Animism and Buddhism, these locations have been regarded as sites of worship since the ancient time. The videos aim to capture the profound spiritual quality of the landscape, while contemplating on the relationship between change and perpetuity in a geological scale.

House of the Singing Winds

House of the Singing Winds (2020) is a three-channel video installation about the memories of a venerated American Midwest Impressionist painter, Theodore Clement Steele (1847-1926), and his wife, Selma Steele (1870-1945). Many of Steele’s masterful interpretations of nature and rural landscape began in his remote Indiana Brown County home, where he was surrounded by his favorite sceneries. The century old house is preserved as a historic site today. With 95% original objects from the family, the house authentically reflects T. C. and Selma Steele’s personality and lifestyle. House of the Singing Winds is an homage to Steele’s work, which depicts the landscapes around and the intimate details inside the historic house. Most of the footage in this piece is filmed with stop motion animation, capturing the fleeting light and passing moments that are once encapsulated in Steele’s paintings. The narration is adapted from Selma Steele’s memoir and provides a rare female perspective on the couple’s pioneering life.