Artwork Appreciation
Chen Ching-Yao’s artworks revolve around Taiwan’s history and cultural identity. Most of his works involve costumes, performances, photography, and video installations. They are most characteristically humorous and satirical, but also thought-provoking. In his photographic work Imitating Harada Naojirō – Kannon Riding a Dragon, he imitates the oil painting Avalokitesvara Riding a Dragon by the Japanese painter Harada Naojirō. In the photograph, he wears white clothes, holds a willow branch in one hand and a kalasa vase in the other, and stands on a painted dragon sculpture, playing the role of the Bodhisattva Guanyin or Kannon. Photoreproductions of Harada Naojirō’s painting circulated widely and became the most common, representative image of Guanyin providing relief from suffering; it became an object of worship among Taiwan’s Buddhists. Chen Ching-Yao’s work, which makes use of the concepts of appropriation and possession behaviors, wittily presents the relationship between secondary transmission and modern history in Taiwanese religion.