Chihyang Hsu

Artist's Statement

At the age of nine, I was diagnosed with color blindness. That moment struck me with the realization that the world was more complicated than I had imagined. It stretched beyond the limits of my perception. My sense of sight submerged under a narrow chromogenic bandwidth. Failing to recognize some wavelengths in the spectrum reduces the ground I share interacting with others, and I need to bypass the indistinct visual evidence to accomplish my description, to fit myself in with the crowd.

To explicitly describe the world, we rely on the abundance of language to shape experience into coherent meaning. However, there are some moments I find that language  itself becomes a form of confusion, and there are other moments I find that it falls short of encompassing the complexity of the earthly state of our existence. Art allows me to expand  the common use of language, both verbal and visual.

I have wondered how and why I came to lens-based art. When I was in kindergarten, I once drew my mom’s face a weird color. Neither the teacher nor I regarded that as a new door opening to my creativity. She said I was “special” with a sarcastic undertone I could perceive even as a child. I started to turn away from drawing, and, moreover, from associating my hands with creation. By transforming life into tangible evidence with a camera, I feel more rooted even though the changing meaning of day-to-day experience is still hard to grasp. The ambiguous reality in images reminds me of the drawing of my mom. It’s the door to creation, and, possibly, different ways of communication.