The Gesture of Being

Chang En-Man's The Great Deluge: Oral History from Pacavalj appears partly unrolled. Red lines and Roman letters cross pale cloth; loose thread hangs from both ends. The text comes from a Pacavalj Paiwan flood account recorded in a 1935 colonial document. Chang has sewn it in reverse stitch across roughly nine metres of cloth.

The writing is not made easier to read. Roman letters are interwoven with characters that are difficult to decipher. Chang works with the account as it survives in that colonial record.

The Gesture of Being opens at ALIEN Art Centre in Kaohsiung on September 12. Curated by Shao Ya-Man and Lien Yung-Hsin, it brings Chang's work together with Shi Jin-Hua, Yeesookyung, Yeh Wei-Li and Charwei Tsai.

Shi's Pencil Walker also makes writing into a physical duration. In the preserved photograph, he walks bare-chested beside a wall already dark with graphite. Drawing equipment is strapped to his body, a line trails behind him, and his shadow falls beside it.

Shi lived with diabetes from the age of seventeen. Daily measurements of blood glucose, insulin and food became part of how he thought about the body. From 1996 to 2015, Pencil Walker developed through predetermined areas, durations and repetitions: walking, reciting Buddhist scripture and wearing the pencil down against the wall.

Korean master ceramists destroy pieces that do not meet their standards, preserving the rarity and value of those they accept. Yeesookyung gathers the fragments, joins them without designing a complete form in advance and covers the gaps with 24K gold leaf.

In Translated Vase TVGW 2, white ceramic pieces form a broad rounded body. Celadon and decorated fragments gather densely at the top. Gold lines leave every join visible.

Fine script runs through the blue circle in Charwei Tsai's With as Many Bodies as There Are Atoms in the Realms. The text comes from the Avataṃsaka Sūtra and Samantabhadra's Practices and Vows. Tsai painted and wrote on linen with lapis lazuli and other mineral pigments, watercolor and ink.

Yeh Wei-Li's Suitcase / Shuinandong, Ruifang opens into a dark brick room. A desk, stool, books, lamp, shell, cable reel and suitcase remain around a bright framed view of rock and vegetation. The photograph belongs to Yeh's longer work at Shuinandong, which included cleaning and repairing the house where the painter Yeh Shih-Chiang had lived.