Hsu Che-Yu: Catastrophism

Catastrophism, a solo exhibition by Hsu Che-Yu, co-created with Chen Wan-Yin and presented by the Hong Foundation, is on view at the Foundation’s exhibition space from now to June 14, 2025.

Hsu Che-Yu’s work draws heavily on personal familial memories, and real social historical events such as siamese twins that surgically separated [1], his late grandmother’s house, the personal memories of the “Rice Bomber,” [2] and the crime scene reconstruction of the “Chiang Nan Incident” [3] political conspiracy. These faded traces of the past are brought back into the present by the artist through computer modeling, animation, video, and installation. Through fictional and altered narratives, real events are re-enacted to create a space where death becomes a starting point, and renewal follows destruction. With this rewritten history, Hsu explores how personal and collective memories are formed and perceived.

Catastrophism, co-created with Chen Wan-Yin, develops from Hsu’s previous concerns, turning to the relationship between the nervous system and the external world. The body is imagined as a simulator of external reality, where sensory input is turned into inner experience, a process the artists compare to fictionalizing the real. Using 3D scanning, virtual reality, and multi-channel videos, Hsu constructs a mode of perception that exists outside of time yet reflects the sensations of the real world, thereby articulating an alternative form of “catastrophism”, a reconsideration of the relationship between soul, body, and disaster.

The work is a continuation of the artist’s long-term collaboration with a forensic scanning team, their methods of digital reconstruction of identities a constant source of creative inspiration to Hsu. From recent media imageries of the bodies of children victims in war and disaster zones, structured light scanner data are collected, reassembled and transformed, combined with motion capture technology to create constructed scenes and child character models in the video work. These figures become copies of bodies left behind after disaster— bodies from which the soul has departed, bodies that serve as special vessels for the external transformation of memory; bodies in the form of children that symbolize unadulterated innocence, violence, and catastrophe.

Catastrophism marks the culmination of the Hong × Rijksakademie Residency Project. Hsu Che-Yu was selected by the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten and received the Hong Foundation Fellowship to support his artistic practice in the Netherlands. Launched in 2023, the HONG × Rijksakademie International Residency Project is a collaborative initiative between the Hong Foundation and the Rijksakademie in the Netherlands. It represents the first time a Taiwanese non-profit organization has partnered with the Rijksakademie on such a residency program. As one of the world’s leading artist-in-residence institutions, the Rijksakademie offers artists comprehensive support—from technical facilities to critical discourse. Through this partnership, artists who are Taiwanese nationals, based in Taiwan, or whose practice is strongly connected to Taiwan and are selected by the Rijksakademie may be eligible to receive a fellowship from the Hong Foundation. With the joint support of both institutions, the program aims to help artists develop their practice by engaging with international resources and expertise.

Hsu Che-Yu (b. 1985) is an artist based in Taipei and Amsterdam. Hsu Che-Yu works as an artist who primarily creates animations, videos, and installations that feature the relations between media and memories. What matters to the artist is not simply the history of events traceable through media, but also the construction and visualization of memories, be they private or collective.

Organizer: Hong Foundation / Supporting Partner: Panasonic Taiwan.

Note
[1] Taiwan’s first conjoined twin separation, aired live in 1979, came to symbolize Taiwan’s complex relationship with China. [2] The 2003 “Rice Bomber” incident, involving undetonated bombs placed by Yang Ru-Men, was later seen as a symbolic protest for Taiwan’s farmers. [3] Henry Liu was assassinated in 1984 in the US in a case later linked to Taiwan’s military intelligence.