Shieh’s art has always intertwined deeply with her life path as well as intellectual enquiries into artistic practice and social structure of the contemporary era. Endowed with feminine attentiveness, her art is both tenacious and big-hearted. Through her exquisite rendering, the bitterness, struggle, pursuit as well as sweetness of life are transformed into images like a polylogue resonant with the utmost richness, ultimately into a multi-level symbolic system.
Works on display were created in the past three years, during which the artist consistently confronted, dissected and embraced different aspects of life in a sincere and feminine perspective. Recent works response to the connection amongst three generation of women, the artist, her mother and daughter. Moreover, as experiences from activities such as gardening and walking dogs nurture her art practice alongside the contemplation of bodily experience and homely interior, the self-contained immanence seen in Shieh’s past works is further expanded to external environment. Thus images of living plants join decorative motives from wallpapers, bones and flesh of dogs that are all included in tableaus besides human bodies, showing a broader consideration of the world. Sketches by the artist are also on display, revealing the deliberation, practice and extension processes underline the development of art, which is refined into context in line with interstices of livelihood.
