Blue Greenhouse

作品賞析

In Blue Greenhouse, the artist Liu Zi-Ping purposefully uses the cyanotype printing technique used by nineteenth-century naturalists as a means of indirectly implying the construction of the Western knowledge system. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew was an important center for botanical research for the British colonies, so it collected plant samples from around the world. The greenhouse here is still planted with large palm plants unique to Asia. The right and left parts of the triptych show the interior of the large greenhouse at Kew, and the center one shows the leaf of the pith-paper plant (Tetrapanax papyrifer) endemic to Taiwan. William Hooker, the first director of Kew Gardens, gave it its scientific name according to the Linnaean classification method, and published it in an academic journal, and for the first time, the word “Taiwan” appeared in an international scientific journal. This work, in terms of concept, is very deep, with many layers of meaning behind the choice of media and technique. There is a huge knowledge system waiting for the viewer to uncover.