The 2023 Green Island Human Rights Art Festival – Listening to the Overtones of Fissures is themed on the seemingly passive, gentle gesture of “listening," hoping to embrace different political, economic and systemic experiences of individuals. These experiences have created wounds, which are like “fissures" that have separated people. At the same time, “fissure" also denotes incongruences and divergencies. Like barriers or differences between individuals and the society produced by the White Terror, these incongruences and divergencies are largely overlooked and await our re-understanding as life progresses. “Overtones" refers to the voices or sounds constantly echoing or emitting from the fissures. An “overtone" is a different frequency that shares the same basis with a fundamental tone; and in this case, it becomes a metaphor for the outcast existences that have been ignored by mainstream opinions.
KUO Yu-Ping’s work is like a collection of prose essays. She organizes and arranges textile, sculptures and reproduced archives to compose visual stories, and invites the audience for a reading. As the most intimate items to people, clothes embody the background and experience of every person. KUO takes apart clothes gathered from different places, and re- sews them into one giant piece of textile, while mending the tears from their unknown past during the process. Being passed down through generations in silence, these tears and mending marks on the clothes bring to mind the journal entry titled “Silent Love" of LANG CHANG A- Tung, a family member of a political victim, in which she voices her remembrance and affection for her husband, from whom she was separated for more than four decades.
