Mind Set Art Center is closing out a spectacular 2023 on a high note with “She Postscript”, a solo exhibition by Juin SHIEH. The show consists of Shieh’s latest oil paintings, sketching and mixed media work. It is scheduled to run from 2 December, 2023 to 12 January, 2024. We invite a warm invitation to you to join us at the opening reception, held at 3:00 pm on 2 December.
Juin SHIEH wears many hats in life, including daughter, wife, mother, scholar and artist. During her decades-long creative journey, SHIEH has dedicated herself to the discovery and expansion of the female subjectivity. She has created artworks with multilayered visuals and intertextuality in an effort to portray the obstacles and struggles facing women, as well as to express their profound consciousness and powerful energy. In her recent artistic explorations, SHIEH has shifted her attention to ephemeral moments of transition between contrasting elements in life. During a spelunking trip in Turkey, the artist experienced utter exhaustion, which led to a momentary out-of-body experience. It was as if her consciousness had traveled through time and saw the shadows in Plato’s Cave, and got a closer view to the blurred lines between reality and illusion, as well as to the unfathomable distance between the self and the universe. After returning from the trip, SHIEH began to savor the elemental moments in her daily life, such as eating and breathing. She begins to gradually tune out the noise that permeates the mundane world and capture the moments of focus and enlightenment during the shifts in her thoughts and emotions.
As the artist once stated, “I experience endless shifts in my thought during everyday life. If I could simplify my daily routine, then even the minutiae such as eating and breathing could be considered a salvation in their own right. The cooking or placement of the produce on my cutting board can be considered visual art that changes as I eat. The ivy growing along my wall and the wild shrubs fight for their space and eventually reach a state of symbiosis. With freehanded brushstrokes on canvases and by sculpting sharp lines and chunky proportions, I try to describe the experience of being confined in my inner prison. The thoughts turn into jagged and smooth lines that emerge and cross path on paper, canvases, as well as other objects such as shields, cutting boards, pots and plates. They have all transformed into artworks.” From the mundane errands that surround all women, SHIEH extrapolates a unique subject for her creative works, and with it, she grows and conveys women’s powerful consciousness. The kitchens and the errands are turned into visual symbols that intertwine with each other endlessly in their perpetual growth.
SHIEH has also taken inspiration from Greek Mythology. Two of her recent paintings, “Pan and Syrinx” and “Apollo and Daphne I” all point to the spirit of “Give me liberty, or give me death!”. The saturated color and dynamic lines in the paintings are her way of turning the stereotype of the passive woman on its head, and creating in its place the female subjectivity. “She Postscript” is SHIEH’s poetic recounting of her creative journey. It is also the distillment of her findings in the smallest moments in life. Every one of the brushstrokes is the manifestation of her murmuring, which eventually turn into the crystallization of her spirit that transcends the boundaries of time, space, and id.
About Juin Shieh
Juin Shieh was born in Miaoli County in Taiwan in 1961. She graduated from the Department of Fine Arts of the National Taiwan Normal University in 1984, and proceeded to earn an M.F.A. at the Pratt Institute in New York. In 1995, Shieh received her D.F.A. at the NYU Steinhardt School. She currently teaches at the NTHU Department of Arts and Design. Shieh’s works have been frequently exhibited at institutions such as the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, the National Museum of History, the Art Bank and White Rabbit Gallery, making her an exemplary figure among Taiwan’s female artists.
