Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea
Hou Chun-Ming
侯俊明
Production date
2008
Object Detail
Media
cardboard relief printing plates
Measurements
14 pieces, installed 210 x 700 cm
Notes
For Hou Chun-Ming, art is a form of psychotherapy. Through it, he makes sense of his life and its “ups and downs, innocence and evils, progress and loss”. Looking back at the age of 50, he identified eight aspects of his changing self and cast them as characters in a wall-length comic strip. Eight Immortals—the title refers to a legend about gods who use their unique gifts to cross a stormy sea—depicts the artist’s evolution from Confucius-reading schoolboy (at right) to lust-crazed photographer, angry rebel, actor-poseur, grieving divorcee, spiritual seeker, and blissful father. Personal stories need “totemic power” if they are to resonate with others, says Hou Chun-Ming. In search of it, he mined Taiwanese folklore, Japanese manga, Buddhist and Daoist scriptures, and Chinese legends. Like the highs and lows of its relief plates and the red and black that colour them, Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea brings into balance its maker’s inner darkness and light: the crude, impulsive, lustful beast, and theprayerful, compassionate, joyous man. It also shows the power of myth and symbols to aid self-understanding. Not for nothing does the artist call himself “Legend Hou”.
Accession number
2015.432