SHI Jin-Hua is a concept and performance artist. He was born in Magong in Penghu County in 1964, passed away in Kaohsiung City in 2024. SHI was diagnosed with diabetes when he was young, and he had to inject insulin, monitor and record various health parameters on a daily basis since the age of 17. This unique experience has made him painfully aware of his state of living at all times. It has also led him to treat his own body as a “the other '', a tool, a vessel through which he expresses his spirituality in his artistic endeavors. SHI is a figure of historical significance in Taiwan’s concept and performance art scene. His works were exhibited at the Taipei Biennial and at the Asian Art Biennial on several occasions. In 2008, SHI held “Pen Walking”, a solo exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. He held another solo show at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in 2017, titled “LINES – Shi Jin-Hua’s Contemporary Religious Art”. In 2021, the Taitung Art Museum hosted his solo, “The Rock Returns to Soil Where the Heart Belongs by Shi Jin-Hua''. His work has been collected by White Rabbit Gallery in Australia, the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, the Taiwan Art Bank and the Fidelity International Art Collection.
The “Pen Walking” series is the foundational core of SHI Jin-Hua’s creative endeavor. The idea hit him during his studies in the U.S. in 1994. SHI noticed one day that a pen that had accompanied him for years a cherished gift from his older brother was almost used up. He spontaneously began drawing random lines on a piece of paper until the pen was completely depleted. The resulting drawing was “Pen Walking #1”, the seminal work that kicked off the series. To draw each and every “Pen Walking” painting, SHI uses up one or several pencils and finishes the work by sticking all the pencil shavings onto paper. The bits of pencil shavings serve as a metaphor for the remains of a human body of whom life has concluded, and the finishing of one pencil after next is a metaphor for an endless circle of life, which is often whimsical and futile. SHI’s artworks are a great example of “physical phenomenology”, which states that the body is both physical and spiritual. For the artist, the body is the medium between the outside world and his spiritual realm, the pencil is an extension of his own body, and the resulting artwork is the collection of all the traces he’s left behind.