Daniel Shieh
Taiwan/Fremont, CA
October 2 - 31 , 2020
Sponsored by The Shepard Broad Foundation, this month’s residency welcomes U.S.-based foreign-born artists.
BIO
Daniel Shieh is an artist from Taiwan. He creates interactive artworks that encourage participants to view each other in a different perspective. His installations have been commissioned by Art in Odd Places, Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, University City Municipal Commission on Arts & Letters, Harvard Office for the Arts, and Jamestown Arts Center. He has been invited as an artist in residence to the Cité Internationale des Arts, Franconia Sculpture Park, Spruce Arts, Laboratory Spokane, the Studios at MASS MoCA, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Wave Pool, WNC Sculpture Park, Monson Arts, Hambidge Center, ChaNorth, I-Park Foundation, Wassaic Project, and ACRE.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I create interactive performances and installations that encourage participants to understand each other beyond rigid identifications (masculine vs. feminine, native vs. foreign, authority vs. subordinate). My works usually involve two or more participants to activate. Once activated, they isolate parts of the participants’ bodies, such as the gaze or the hand. Participants then present themselves to each other in a mediated manner, such as reflecting one’s gaze through mirrors or meeting each other’s hands through a flexible fabric membrane.
The intimacy of mutual display, in which participants become hyper-aware of their existence in each other’s minds, is enveloped with a strangeness created by the mediation. This strangeness temporarily destabilizes the meaning of social categories and the participants’ usual identifications of each other. By fostering intimacy in strangeness, I challenge ways of understanding each other that rely on compulsory identifications.
ARTIST LINKS
https://www.instagram.com/danielshieh/