反過來

The earth, I am told, is ‘old’. Agricultural industries that use farming chemicals and pesticides are making us sick. I collect our exchanges made during the residency: The memories of growing plants in the mountains. My own reflections. Another resident artist, Homie, has a proposal to paint a landscape of plants which one can drink. My proposal was to find out if weaving can be a sort of writing. There are several strands to weave together.

In my 2016 project ‘Garden Conservation’, I contributed in bringing a non-native plant, woven into the soil with Dumuen’s basket, to the Taroko people’s private gardens, to query the definition of what is ‘natural’ in a national park. This year, my project “反過來” (to turn over or reverse) develops this by bringing in additional strands, through an experiment with “sheet mulching”, a permaculture technique to make rich soil, a sort of “composting in place”, which roots organic material into the earth. In Amei and Kcing’s garden, I “build soil” (by layering cut weeds, cardboard, earth and organic waste from the guest house, and my homemade compost, with my writing and painting mistakes, brought from Taipei) to grow edible plants, endemic, introduced and cosmopolitan. These are the plants which come from the past memories and future wishes of Amei’s family (青椒, 咖啡, 薑黃, bunga, 玉米, hagugi, 七葉蘭, lavender…)

This site will have multiple, collective uses. Less weeds will grow because a weed barrier is created, meaning the garden should need less maintenance, saving time for the family in their busy lives. Instead of using chemical fertilizer, the plants will have nutrients provided by the decaying process of a forest, and could be eaten by the family and their guests. These include plants that the artist Homey is using to make drinks. Finally, to this layering I add the writing and painting mistakes I have made in the process of trying to document my host family’s memories, our exchanges, and my own reflections of this time. The history of the land, the memories of the family, our experiences together, with the future projections of Kcing and Amei’s garden, will slowly merge through different rooting structures and soil building processes, in an installation that is only a suggestion of a potentially fertile ‘food forest’ landscape. It is a woven writing thinking about how this ‘old earth’ can be lived again.

Thank you to Amei, Kcing and Axiang for hosting this experiment in Liwu Shan, and for Dumuen’s ongoing cooperation introducing me to Taroko basket weaving.

“By composting in place, the soil organisms, so essential for ferrying nutrients to plant roots, aren’t disturbed. An intact subterranean ecology develops, woven by silken fibers of mycelium, riddled with the channels of traveling microfauna, bound into perfect tilth by the gummy exudates and carbon-rich liquors of metabolism. Oxygen-gulping microbes colonize the upper layers of soil, and the shy anaerobes work their complex alchemy further below. Exploding populations of wriggling worms loosen the earth deep down, churning their nutrient-rich castings into the mulch. A thousand-specied hive of interlinked subterranean activity erects its many pathways of decomposition and resurrection as sowbugs, worms, mites, amoebae, and fungi swarm in fertility-building concert. Plants tap into this seething stew and thrive. And all this is co-created…” – Toby Hemenway, “Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home Scale Permaculture.”

Candice Jee (余曉冰/Biang) is an artist born in Perth, Australia of Malaysian Hakka descent, and currently based in Taipei. Her work investigates processes of displacement, movement and rearrangement as part of cultural identification. This generates various outcomes, in installations often consisting of sculpture, sound, architectural interventions, and living organisms (such as plants, soil and worms.) Constantly shifting materials and meanings echo the in-betweenness and accommodation of diaspora/migrant experience.

She is a Meisterschülerin of Visual Arts from the Berlin University of Arts (Universität der Künste Berlin) and has a MA in Chinese Arts from the National Taiwan University of Arts. Her Bachelor of Arts (Visual Art) is from Curtin University, Western Australia.