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Moving Image

Joy Chia-Yu Yeh

b.1997, Taipei, Taiwan, now based in London, UK.

Joy Chia-Yu Yeh is a multidisciplinary artist, her practice often works in a range of media, including moving image, performance, sculpture and installation. By interweaving these diverse media, she tries to explore the connection between humankind and the universe.

Joy graduated from Taipei National University of the Arts, Taiwan in 2019 with a B.F.A. Fine Art degree. She is currently taking the MA course in her final year at Royal College of Art for Contemporary Art Practice-Moving Image. She has exhibition, performance and art competition experiences in Taiwan, UK and Macao in recent years.

Joy Chia-Yu Yeh

-The Universe & Humankind-

 

The universe covers everything.

Imagining if the universe is a huge scale painting,

then,

on it,

where can we find the humankind?

Probably at the corner.

Here it is- a tiny dot.

Left by the painter randomly and isn't easy to be seen at all.

 

But

what if viewing through a magnifier?


No longer as tiny as it used to be;

instead,

a larger one with textures,

woven by each painting brush bristle,

which contains pigments.


Can those textures as metaphor of human activity traces

left everywhere and anywhere in our daily life?

Yes.

Then, will these traces become the evidences of humankind

interacting with the universe?

Definitely Yes.

I will say.


Joy Chia-Yu Yeh's current work is inspired by the ritual theatre performance ‘Miroirs De Vie' (Legend Lin Dance Theatre, Taiwan), leading human consciousness back to the origin of universe by applying Taiwan’s folklore and eastern philosophies. This brings her to think of Chinese traditional philosophy ‘WuXing’, which has the interpretation that originally refers to a conceptual imagination of five-fold schemes (gold, wood, water, fire, soil), explaining the interaction between cosmos cycle system and human body’s internal organs.

Based on WuXing, Joy picks up the top scheme ‘gold’ for further discussions. 'Gold' pronounced as 'Jin' in Mandarin. Her methodology of approaching this theme is through modern human perspectives, rather than through Chinese traditional philosophy's point of view, since she lives in nowadays.

With the above concern, Joy then questions herself: How to reinterpret Jin? How does Jin build up the relationship with the modern society? 

Jinology- Beginning Ritual (full version), 2021

In Middle Ages, there were lots of alchemists thought they could transmute lead into gold.

Jin goes hand in hand with economic activities.

1717, the United Kingdom defined sterling’s value in terms of gold rather than silver for the first time, then following with tremendous currency system evolution worldwide for the next couple of years, Jin did involve in it quite a lot.

To trust Jin, is a way to build up the foundations of modern currency system-Gold Standard.

Start-up companies’ new technological developments are beneficial to human life, and their investment sources are from Venture Capital finance. This will become a sustaining loop.


Jinology is a briefing that gives the rough ideas of ‘Jin’ through different perspectives. It explores Jin’s essence; travels back to see through the historical relationship between Jin and the currency system, while also pushes forward to future by discussing Jin’s contributions toward the economic and financial developments in human civilization.

This work shows in four parts: three video clips and one digital newspaper, that mainly encompasses unprofessional experiments, game rules, interactions, which are demonstrated by myself playing with multi roles. 

Medium:

moving image

Size:

55 secs, Full HD
Jinology- Risk or Profit? (full version), 2021

Jin’s contributions toward the economic and financial developments in human civilization

This video shows the investment risk of Venture Capital (VC), a demonstration of fluctuation and fierce competition of this event, through the chess game played by seven hand-made soft toys, as the representations of seven start-up companies, with a VC manager.

Medium:

moving image

Size:

6 mins 24 secs, Full HD
Jinology- Essence (full version), 2021

The internal and the external shapes of Jin, as well as its essence 

In this video, I use my body to measure four landscapes: Bamboo Shoots Tower, Spider Silk Butter Lion Statue, Organic Chlorella Chichen Itza, and Lonely Chocolate Castle, then show four geometric shapes as unscientific data records, which are pictured by measurement routes.

The idea 'Body as measurement' is clearly to be an inaccurate measurement way, but on the other hand, it can correspond to Jin itself- abstracted and immaterial, which never able to be measured. Additionally, this measurement way also demonstrates the human's interactions with the environment in the universe.





Medium:

moving image

Size:

2 mins 18 secs, Full HD
Jinology-Silver v.s. Gold, 2021

The historical relationship between Jin and currency system

Currency market was in turmoil before 1717. Then it approached to equilibrium when gold was elected as value mediator.

In this digital newspaper, there shows the comparisons of value balance between Silver and Gold Sterling, which were published before and after 1717, respectively.

Medium:

Digital newspaper

Size:

4 pages

The Ministry of Education, Taiwan Government

Taiwan Educational Scholarship for Oversea Study

Taiwan Hsing Tian Kong Culture and Education Development Foundation

Taiwan Hsing Tian Kong Long Term Gifted Students Scholarship