COLLECTIONS
Betelnut Tree, Bird’s-Nest Fern and African Snails, 2020, Video work, 2 channels, 14’40’’, Ed. 2/3, Still image credit line: ©TTC Studios
Director: Tsai Tubie, Sound: Feng Ziming, Installation Co-production: Zi-Ying Chuang, KENG Chieh Sheng, Chu Chu Lun, Hunter: Huí Gǔ Ēn Mǔ Yī, Bird’s Nest Fern Farmer: Sheng Tai Chiu
All images courtesy of the artist
Betelnut Tree, Bird's-Nest Fern and African Snails is Ting-Tong Chang’s latest project created in 2020. It documents the artist’s two-week stay in a mountainous area, where he collaborated with an Amis tribal hunter and created a dwelling place there using locally sourced materials.
They also placed traps and made inventive survival apparatuses. Through an installation consisting of a semi-documentary two-channel video and the dwelling place and apparatuses created, Chang presents connections between the following three indigenous species found in Taiwan’s natural landscape: betelnut tree, bird’s-nest fern, and African snails. He seeks to use an object-oriented perspective to reevaluate the trajectory of human history, with experiments conducted on transforming “art skills” into “survival skills”.
Betelnut trees were first imported by the Dutch into Taiwan, but betelnut consumption was banned during the Japanese colonial period. As industrialization took off, betelnut became popular amongst the labor class for its energy boosting effects.
Bird’s-nest fern is a wild edible plant native to Taiwan and has become an expensive organic produce as people become more health conscious. The horticulture of bird’s-nest fern has also impacted the ecological landscape of betelnut groves. African snails were introduced by the Japanese government from Singapore as a meat substitute; however, Han Chinese biases have turned the snails into a major agricultural pest for the bird’s-nest fern. The symbiotic relationship between these three species seems to be due to natural evolution; however, in reality, it is a human-induced product shaped by interconnected political, economic, and cultural structures.
Ting Tong Chang (b. 1982)
He was born in Taiwan and currently resides and works in London
Education:
MFA at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2011
Award:
2021 Taipei Art Award
19th Taishin Arts Award, Taipei Art Award 2020,
Hong Kong Art Central RISE Award 2016,
VIA Arts Prize 2016, and Royal Society of Sculptors Bursary Award 2015.
His works can be found in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Art Bank, Hong Foundation, Embassy of Brazil London, JM SR Collection Mexico and private collections in Europe and Asia.
