Huang Po-Chih. Blue Elephant

Huang Po-Chih's presentation at mumok is centered around the multi-part work series Production Line - Made in China & Made in Taiwan (2014-21). Based on his essay Blue Skin: Mama's Story (2011-13), in which he recounts his mother's eventful working life, Huang's series addresses the rise and fall of Taiwanese textile production and its incremental outsourcing to Shenzhen, China. Huang's mother and other former, now unemployed textile workers participated in this project as hands for a makeshift denim-shirt production line that leads from Shenzhen back to Taipei. Huang used the platforms of the Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale (2014) and the Taipei Biennial (2014), where the shirts were produced and sold in several production steps, to investigate how "art (in the form of commodities or events) can initiate new meanings and definitions within complex social relationships". Text: Karola Kraus, Heike Eipeldauer, Huang Po-Chih, Amy Cheng