Arts & Culture

Taiwan artist turns calligraphy into social art

Calligrapher Chen Hsih-hsien injects an innovative grassroots element into Chinese calligraphy. (Staff photo/June Tsai)

• Publication Date：07/21/2012
• Source： Taiwan Today
• By  June Tsai

As digital tools replace handwriting in the computer age, many people still find calligraphy, from grinding ink to actually writing, a good means of self-cultivation. Yet Taiwanese artist Chen Hsih-hsien approaches the art as performance, storytelling and a form of exchange with people and the times.

“The traditional functions of calligraphy have largely been lost or replaced, and what makes a calligraphic work interesting today is the modern expression of an individual’s feeling, a practice of contemporary, localized aesthetics,” Chen said in an interview July 1.

Chen, author of four books and several community cultural projects featuring his calligraphy, knew from the beginning of his career he did not want to spend his time alone in a studio imitating classical writing styles that evolved in ancient China.

“As the child of a poor family from southern Taiwan, I am not able to write like a Chinese court calligrapher of long ago, nor can my writing catch the charm in the style of Emperor Huizong of the Song dynasty [960-1279], however hard I work at imitating it,” Chen said.

“Imitating ancient masters is only the first step toward becoming skilled in character writing, but that is just a technical part to the art,” he said.

Chen draws his materials from daily life and reflection, rather than from texts written by ancient Chinese literati. For him, calligraphy is a way for the artist to interact with his environment and society.

Born in Tainan City’s Baihe District, the 44-year-old Chen learned to write with brush and ink in school like most people of his generation, but really developed an interest in the art in his early teens, when he spent most of his free time on it.

At the age of 19 he made up his mind to pursue nothing else for the rest of his life.

Chen’s rendering of the seven-character idiom “All things in their being are good for something” is dedicated to children in a Tainan home for the disabled. (Courtesy of Chen Hsih-hsien)

At university, Chen managed to spend up to six hours a day practicing all character styles, from the oldest oracle bone script through seal, clerical, standard, semi-cursive to cursive scripts.

After completing his military service, instead of looking for a regular job, he returned to Baihe, determined “to spend the next 20 years being poor and just doing what I like to do.”

He rolled up his sleeves and renovated a former pigsty, left unused after the family stopped raising swine, into a studio suitable for his own use.

“In the studio where I used to help feed the pigs, I did three things: practice calligraphy, read and watch foreign art films.” Chen said works by directors like Andrei Tarkovsky, Yasujiro Ozu and Francois Truffaut led him to think about how their movies succeed in transcending national and cultural borders to touch people’s hearts, and how calligraphy could do the same.

And Baihe, known for its 200 hectares of lotus fields, inspired him. Taking walks barefooted and talking with lotus farmers gave him ideas for many calligraphic works.

“The lotus is traditionally an object for aesthetic projection of the literati, but in Baihe, it represents hot, sweaty labor,” Chen said. The forms of the Chinese characters in his calligraphy began to reveal the figures of farmers—male and female, young and old— with local mountains as backdrop.

“I saw characters in the swaying of a palm leaf, in the breeze over a field of lotus flowers, in my pace walking down a country road.”

Chen fashioned Chinese characters into imagery from things all around him, with resulting works of a single character or groups of characters amounting to simultaneous abstract paintings and concretized ideas.

He believes this kind of Chinese calligraphy can communicate with people, in particular those who do not read Chinese.

This colored Chinese character for “bad” is part of Chen Hsih-hsien’s solo exhibition at Tainan-based Silver Cloud Art, on display until July 31. (Staff photo/June Tsai)

Stephane Corcuff, a French specialist on Taiwan’s history and geopolitics, was one of the first to appreciate the unique effects of Chen’s work. He notes how Chen shapes the two characters representing “Taiwan” into the form of the island, and how a work titled “Love” reconfigures two instances of the character meaning “love” to depict a kissing couple.

“Chen’s genius lies in his reinventing the calligraphy of Han characters. He revisits Chinese culture and makes it Taiwanese.” Corcuff organized a traveling exhibition of Chen’s work in France in 2008, where the calligrapher also spoke about his work and staged a performance of calligraphy writing, attracting a fascinated crowd.

In a performance style he developed, Chen writes on a large sheet of paper hung on a wall, or on a standing board, with his brush strokes coordinated with music.

In his pieces, he uses expressive lines, colors and spatial arrangement to tell stories. “Book of Love,” published in 2005, for example, presents a series of works all using the character for “love” to relate the tale of a man and a woman looking for love, courting, having a relationship and separating.

“His calligraphy has become something of a multidimensional thing, where emotions, plots and even social background are condensed into a character,” commented Chen Jing-jieh, publisher of the artist’s latest calligraphic story, “Sunrise, Sunset.”

These works are the result of hours of labor and patient waiting. After almost 20 years of focusing on one thing, Chen Hsih-hsien said, he can now confidently find the right characterization for an idea.

Chen Jing-jieh believes that the calligrapher’s creativity comes from his solid technical base and powerful ability to put ideas into practice.

Chen’s calligraphic version of the three characters for “Taiwanese,” as printed on this student satchel, resembles the shape of the island. His series of book bags will be part of the JAALA International Art Exhibition in Tokyo in August. (Courtesy of Chen Hsih-hsien)

“In this sense, Chen has caught what was essential to the old masters,” the publisher said. He explained that great calligraphers such as acclaimed Song dynasty poet Su Dong-po were men of action who wrote about real experience and valued communication with their contemporaries.

Chen Hsih-hsien’s free sourcing of traditions for border-crossing experimentation has extended to the wider community through public art projects. In 2004, he collaborated with other artists to transform a 1.5-kilometer mango tree-flanked village road into a Baihe landmark.

He also organized a calligraphy competition for local students and art lovers in the lotus flowering season, which has become a characteristic tourist event.

In recent years, Chen joined local handicraft businesses to develop calligraphy-based cultural products. An ongoing project making book bags printed with his calligraphic renderings of local identities from around Taiwan, such as “Chiayi ren,” or “person from Chiayi,” “Kaohsiung ren” and “Tainan ren,” has generated a lot of business.

This series will be displayed in the 18th JAALA International Art Exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum Aug. 11 to 19. With this show, Chen said, he plans to articulate the rising Taiwanese subjectivity for a foreign audience.

His willingness to make friends and share ideas is the secret to his success, Chen believes.

“I have been looking for characterization outside of characters,” he said. “Real contact with people and their stories is what gives me ideas for my art, and I hope my work possesses the power to speak directly to people everywhere.” (THN)