Kang Ya-Chu

Kang Ya-Chu is a Taipei-based artist. Her work explores issues of identity, the relationship between human and nature and the social environment through mix-media sculpture, site-specific installation, land art, video, drawing, photographs, textile research and collaboration. Drawing inspiration from her travel experience and the rich weaving history of the world, Kang’s work often reflects themes of boundary related to life and death, yin and yang, identity and camouflage, private and public, known and unknown, artificial and natural. The materials themselves carry nostalgia and original meanings often hidden by their symbolisms. Described as ‘simulation objects’, her work eliminates the boundary between usable items and sculptures — the functional and the aesthetic. She works with the treatment of surfaces and exteriors often through the medium of textile. The processes include embracing accidents, mutations and accretions of surface and detail with time, accepting that nature will have its way, with changeable, variable, transient and fluid mediums such as plants, sun, salt and water, and considers the possibility of environmental sustainable development.