Looking in the Distance

作品賞析

In Looking in the Distance, a white stork, a symbol for love, soars above the clouds, and at the top of the large Taihu rock, a woman in modern dress is looking back at us, as if starting a dialogue with the viewing public. Her backward look at us is also a look back on her own “female identity” and its changes over the centuries. The Taihu rock has a creased, thin, firm feeling, true to the aesthetic tradition of literati painting, but the artist, Nieh Hui-Yun, makes it contemporary, putting it in a monumental composition and giving it vaguely masculine characteristics, thereby suggesting a scene of erotic desire. The Taiwanese blue magpie perched on the rock’s midsection leads the gaze to the embracing man and woman dressed in the Ming style. In antiquity, if a woman is depicted with any skin exposed, she is usually in amorous embrace with a man—implying that women in the feudal era were limited by the rights enjoyed by men. However, the modern woman at the top of the rock has already escaped domination by men and has embarked on a splendid journey in pursuit of her own life.