Hermit Crab Project

2008 - Photography (Photography)

Charwei Tsai

location: Taipei, Taiwan
location: Paris, France
year born: 1980
gender: female
nationality: Taiwanese
home town: Taipei, Taiwan

Charwai Tsai’s photograph documents her Hermit Crab Project installation upon the construction site of gallery Sora in Tokyo. Tsai placed live hermit crabs and shells in a sandy enclosure at the site, writing fragments of The One China policy and the Taiwanese Independence statements on each shell. As the hermit crabs moved and swapped shells, they formed new connections between the statements. Tsai calls attention to the ephemerality of political declarations and makes the movements of animals into metaphors for the changing course of history.


Taiwanese multimedia artist Charwai Tsai often explores geographical, social, and spiritual concerns through performative and ephemeral artworks. She chooses materials that decompose or change to contemplate notions of impermanence and transience. Tsai is also editor-in-chief of “Lovely Daze”, a bi-annual journal of artists’ writings and artworks curated around specific themes for each issue.


Colors:



Untitled (Cathedral)
© » KADIST

Tina Modotti

1930

The Italian photographer Tina Modotti is known for her documentation of the mural movement in Mexico...

Diego Rivera Mural: Billionaires Club; Ministry of Education, Mexico D.F., Third Gallery
© » KADIST

Tina Modotti

1927

Modotti’s Diego Rivera Mural: Billionaires Club; Ministry of Education, Mexico D...

Do ut des (I give that you may give back)
© » KADIST

Mariana Castillo Deball

2009

Do ut des (2009) is part of an ongoing series of books that Castillo Deball has altered with perforations, starting from the front page and working inward, forming symmetrical patterns when each spread is opened...

That’s That’s Alright Alright Mama Mama
© » KADIST

Mark Soo

2008

The two large-scale stereoscopic photographs in That’s That’s Alright Alright Mama Mama depict a recreation of Elvis Presley’s recording studio in Memphis, Tennessee...

Other related works, blended automatically  
» see more

Untitled (Cathedral)
© » KADIST

Tina Modotti

1930

The Italian photographer Tina Modotti is known for her documentation of the mural movement in Mexico...

Diego Rivera Mural: Billionaires Club; Ministry of Education, Mexico D.F., Third Gallery
© » KADIST

Tina Modotti

1927

Modotti’s Diego Rivera Mural: Billionaires Club; Ministry of Education, Mexico D...

No Title
© » KADIST

Félix González-Torres

1992

Behind the simplicity and beauty of this untitled photograph of a brilliantly-colored flowerbed by Félix González-Torres are two remarkable stories of love, loss, and resilience...

La Memoria Verde
© » KADIST

Enrique Ramirez

2019

Enrique Ramirez’s La Memoria Verde is a work of poetry, politics, and memory created in response to the curatorial statement for the 13th Havana Biennial in 2019, The Construction of the Possible ...

Related works sharing similar palette  
» see more

Five-Hundred Twenty-Four
© » KADIST

Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis

2022

Five Hundred Twenty-Four, a single-channel video installation by Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis, features singers from over twenty Cleveland-area choirs counting numbers in an iterative process: one person sings “one”, then two people sing “two”, and so forth, to 524...

Royal Velázquez Portrait Expected to Shatter Auction Records
© » OBSERVER

Royal Velázquez Portrait Expected to Shatter Auction Records | Observer A portrait of a Spanish queen painted by Diego Velázquez, the 17th-century artist celebrated for his depictions of Spain’s royal family, is expected to shatter his auction record when it goes up for sale early next year...

Podcast 65: M1 CONTACT Contemporary Dance Festival (Part 1)
© » ARTS EQUATOR

Podcast 65: M1 CONTACT Contemporary Dance Festival (Part 1) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Photo: Crispian Chan September 12, 2019 Duration: 20 min Podcast host Chan Sze-Wei and guest Melissa Quek discuss works they saw at the recent M1 CONTACT Contemporary Dance Festival, specifically at the platforms DiverCity, Off Stage and M1 Open Stage...

American Artist: Shaper of God at REDCAT
© » KADIST

American Artist: Shaper of God at REDCAT Featuring newly commissioned work in video, installation, sculpture, and drawing, Shaper of God takes inspiration from science fiction author Octavia E...

Related artist(s) to: Charwei Tsai » Heman Chong, » San Francisco, » Shilpa Gupta, » Song Dong, » Aki Sasamoto, » Alexis Destoop, » Asia Society, » Ava Ansari, » Burçak Bingöl, » Ceren Erdem  
» see more

Poetry Light Stool
© » KADIST

Aki Sasamoto

2012

Poetry Light Stool evokes the spirit of Fluxus, the intermedia movement that encouraged artmaking to be simple, fun, and address everyday life...

The Book Cover series
© » KADIST

Heman Chong

2009

With a habit of reading eight to ten books at the same time, Chong paints his two-foot tall novel covers through referencing an extensive reading list (accessible on Facebook) he has kept since 2006...

100 Hand drawn maps of my country, India
© » KADIST

Shilpa Gupta

2014

These hand drawn maps are part of an ongoing series begun in 2008 in which Gupta asks ordinary people to sketch outlines of their home countries by memory...

Untitled (Don’t See, Don’t Hear, Don’t Speak)
© » KADIST

Shilpa Gupta

2008

The three monkeys in Don’t See, Don’t Hear, Don’t Speak are a recurring motif in Gupta’s work and refer to the Japanese pictorial maxim of the “three wise monkeys” in which Mizaru covers his eyes to “see no evil,” Kikazaru covers his ears to “hear no evil,” and Iwazaru covers his mouth to “speak no evil.” For the various performative and photographic works that continue this investigation and critique of the political environment, Gupta stages children and adults holding their own or each other’s eyes, mouths and ears...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

Peg and Jon
© » KADIST

John Houck

2013

Houck’s Peg and John was made as part of a series of photographic works that capture objects from the artist’s childhood...

Beroana (Shell money) I
© » KADIST

Taloi Havini

2015

Following her family’s political exile to Australia in 1990, Havini began to document her journey’s home to the north of Buka Island, in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville...

Ghost games
© » KADIST

Anri Sala

2002

Ghost Games , follows the enigmatic dance of crabs “steered” by a flashlight in the night of darkness of a South American beach...