Artwork Appreciation
Sugar has always been an expensive cash crop and a luxury product in human history, but its status has changed in today’s fitness culture. The artist Lo Yi-Chun has thus remade sugarcane bagasse molds into fitness equipment and used mirrors to reflect on people’s present-day extreme pursuit of appearances. She used various media, including a set of weightlifting bars and plates, to construct a model of the molecular structure of protein during the fourth stage of its transformation into muscle tissue, as a response to fitness culture. The English phrase in the title of her work, “You da bomb,” is used to compliment others on their excellent fitness training. The clouded leopard totem engraved on the round pulley on the back of the work comes from the scary animal patterns often painted on aircraft to intimidate enemies or identify oneself. These various features are clues pointing to the history of the cane sugar industry. Many wars have been fought due to competition for resources, and one of the products of sugar refineries was used as fuel for military use.