荔枝樹下(Under The Lychee Trees)




2026
荔枝樹下( Under The Lychee Tree)
polymer clay, resin, bamboo, light bulb
soil, paper mache, nylon wire, bicycle wheel 

然而, We live as if we are immortal。🕳
Yáo Space, Taichung, Taiwan
For as long as I can remember, my family has owned a small orchard in southern Taiwan (Pingtung). Many plants and fruits are grown in the garden. Sometimes the ripe fruit is too late to be picked and falls under the fruit tree to become a feast for insects and flies and multitudes of life under the soil, where it gradually decays and becomes part of the sustenance for other life. The lychee fruits are usually in full bloom in May, slowly turning from a greenish colour to a deep pink, branches are weighed down by the weight of the fruit, and the air is filled with a sweet, greasy aroma.

At the end of one year‘s harvest season, the lychee fruits in the garden were almost all collected, and I sat on the swing in the orchard playing. The swing was right next to a towering lychee tree, and I was enjoying the early afternoon sunshine and extending my legs as I tried to swing myself up as high as I could go. As I shook my legs more vigorously, my vision changed, and at one moment of ascent, I saw the pink colour of the top of the nearby lychee tree. Once again, I swung myself up to the highest point and realised that there were clusters upon clusters of bright, full, ripe, unpicked lychees glistening in the sunlight. When I realised this, I immediately jumped off the swing and ran to report my discovery to Grandpa, who was in charge of the picking work at that time. My family was surprised that they didn’t realise how much fruit had been left out of the harvest.









Take a moment to reflect on this memory and how it affects the way I see things and myself now: One of them is about vision. I can see things that I couldn‘t see with normal height and sight because of the change in my viewing angle. The other is about specificity. This memory has convinced me that I have the ability to see things that others cannot see, and I have the power to reveal the precious things that remain undiscovered to others in their own way.





2026
高園(Highland)
acrylic, nylon wire, fruit protection bag
In 高園Highland), old family photographs are redrawn onto fruit protection bags. This artwork responds to the lived memory within 荔枝樹下Under the Lychee Tree)—an experience through which I first became aware of my ways of seeing. What influenced me most profoundly within this memory were the "gaze" and the "swing." This can be approached from two distinct levels. The first is the physical line of sight: as my perspective elevated, I caught sight of the lychees waiting to be harvested. Within the rising and falling arc of the swing, I was continuously immersed in a dynamic landscape of the visible, invisible, visible, and invisible. With just a slight drop in my line of sight, the gleaming lychees hanging from the treetops would vanish from view. Yet, within that same descending gaze, there were other elements demanding to be noticed and observed.

The second level concerns the gaze of memory. I often feel that the very act of recalling this memory functions as a retrospective swing. In revisiting this distant childhood memory, I frequently struggle to discern which details are real. Consequently, I often feel as though I am moving through the rising and falling arc of time, perpetually suspended within a dynamic recollection that flickers between the visible, invisible, visible, and invisible facets of this radiant past. If my gaze shifts or drops even slightly, this memory that I treasure so deeply slips entirely out of sight.







2026
小白(White)
soil, wood, polymer clay, paint
In creating the artwork 小白(White), I was influenced by the balcony of the family home in the South, a *tapestry featuring a unicorn, and the concept of the hortus conclusus (enclosed garden). The reason 小白(White) is able to thread through the entire exhibition is that he occupies a unique "Intermediate position." For instance, being closer to the ground than humans, he can listen to the voice of the soil; possessing a more dynamic agency than the lychee tree, he can actively explore and touch the boundaries of the orchard; and he is closer to humanity than other insects and creatures. Within him, I perceive a quality brimming with dynamic tension, suspended between life and death, flora and fauna. If the entire exhibition space is imagined as an orchard, 小白(White) is a presence that traverses from the entryway to the innermost room, wandering within the interstitial spaces of the corridors.

*The Unicorn Rests in a Garden (from the Unicorn Tapestries)






Documentation :

Kai Chieh Chang