Firearm, Skull, and Bones

作品賞析

The artist Liang Ting-Yu collaborates with local cultural and historical workers and uses the concept of ghosts to bring out various issues of history, memory, and ethnic relations, and to develop creative results in multiple forms, such as moving images, workshops, and research writing. His Firearm, Skull, and Bones is based on the history of anthropological surveys done by the Japanese on Taiwan’s aborigines during the colonial period, and it is a reflection on “colonization.” During that time, Japanese anthropologists went deep among the aboriginal tribes to conduct academic investigations, but it was actually a display of the military might of the colonial empire, wrapped in academic clothing, and it was part of a series of policies to suppress them by force. The skulls of aborigines who died in the war to suppress them were gathered into anthropological skull collections. They were photographed, labeled, classified, and archived. However, each photo of damaged skulls reflects an indelible and painful part of colonial history, and now stand as a harsh critique of anthropological photography.