Hsiao-Chu (Julia)
Hsia
夏
小筑
Environmental Experiment
2022
"Urban Reverence to Urban Divergence" Group Show, curated by Taiwanese American Arts Council
IW Gallery, Pfizer Building, Brooklyn, NY, U.S.
Through this interactive performance, the artist Hsiao-Chu Hsia aims to raise awareness of environmental issues by visualizing the relationship between human beings and nature. We make decisions day by day based on our preferences, needs, and expectations. These behaviors and actions impact the environment directly and indirectly, consciously and unconsciously from small to big scale. A lot of time, we might not be able to recognize what we will bring to results. Hsia would like to invite audiences to join a laboratory setting to do “experiments” together. The three tasks in the piece serve as metaphors for three subtopics under environmental issues.
The first task, melting ice cubes that were made with matcha powder with a hairdryer, represents the issue of sea level rise and ice glaciers melting. The second task, decorating and shaping dried plants with watery coffee, implies overurbanization and humans’ attitudes toward nature. The last one, skewering styrofoam balls that were soaked in beet juice on sticks, points out specific ways of animal consumption. At the end of the performance, audiences will see how they collectively create three paintings with the paper underneath, standing for ecological footprints that we make through living.
This is a piece reminding people how human behaviors are closely connected to the planet and can easily impact and change the environment from every angle. Hsia wants to motivate people to rethink and share thoughts about how we live, then potentially make changes from then.
2019
BBOX, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD, U.S.