Listen to Your Heart in Enormous Noise

Ocean Variation Photo provided by IPCF

Iyo shrinks his shoulder and lowers his head, seems quite cramped on driver’s seat. He is too big for this car. The body shape reminds me of the work at Hualien Cultural Park: The Internal Structure of Land. It is a giant which is composed with wood chips sitting on the concrete floor. It holds a red heart and the blood inside being non-stop transfused to branches, plants, pads and Taipei 101 on its head.

Before I have a chance to ask Iyo why he moves his studio Jinpu, our car stops at an ordinary townhouse. An electric saw shrills abruptly the air. The noise makes me wonder if I interrupt Iyo’s work. He assures me it is fine for the huge cylindrical wood piece standing here is almost finished. Like The Internal Structure, it is collaged with long and thin wood clips to circle the internal structure of steel. The top of tube is open and a water-tap is installed underneath.

Iyo calls this piece kahicera’an, means gathering here. In the old times, his peoples called the place where collects drift woods or fishes ‘kahicera’an’. Iyo sees Shitiping Scenic Recreation, the future home for this art piece, rain-collecting tube, and all kinds of the wood clips on it as camphorwood, cypress, beechwood, Formosan michelia, Chinese elm, and red cedar are all kahicera’an.

‘I will invite people to draw on wood clips, people from my village, children and friends, to draw their feelings towards land. I will collage these clips to my work afterwards. They will be like blessings.’ He gave me a piece of clip and asked:’ would you like to draw one?’ I declined and said I am bad at drawing. He replied with smile ‘That’s ok, me too.’ This is his first try to include his community people in his creation, another form of gathering to him.

Distance with the public is tricky as working in village. Iyo’s studio used to locate at Shitiping. Having a café opened the studio more to the public. ‘No matter how busy I was, there were tourists would just walk in and ask “what are you doing now?”’ People still do that now but it is much quieter after his studio relocating to Jinpu. Be that as it may, Iyo doesn’t really want to build an isolated space to work. He wants to intrigue the young’s curiosity as he was attracted to the displays of village artist’s studio when he was a teenager.

Iyo Kacaw IPCF

The series of ‘Ocean Variation’(2015) derives from Iyo’s experience of painting and listening waves by the sea. ’At all the sudden, I noticed that I couldn’t calm myself down. It turned out that the rhythm of waves changed. The natural rhythm I am used to was gone. I realized what happened when I walked to shore. There were armor blocks stretching 2 or 3 kilometers. They are the cause of my restlessness.’ For a Amis fisherman, responding to the natural rhythm of waves and tides is one of his instinct. With the aggressive invasion of artificial objects, land erosion and waves alteration, ‘my most beautiful window at coast has been occupied by these alien unnatural creations.’ His art works seem to be more his life experience than social issues.

Iyo went to all the creeks and beaches as learning jewelry lapping and grinding in the junior high school. He goes to mountains and beaches to collect drift woods for his wood carving work in his adult life. Iyo has his own understandings about the wisdom and secrets this land carries. Wood is still the main material of his creation. ‘I just like its fragrance.’ he says. He also works extensively with metal, plastic, fiber-reinforced plastic, ceramic and cement. ‘I want to make documentary and image works as well.’ he adds. What would be the most important to him if either material or form matters? I ask.

He taps the wood clip at hand and contemplates for a while, and answers:’ whatever it is. One is more sensitive than the others therefore what he sees and thinks are different with the others. Say it is a stone, what can be found at beach are smooth ones but they actually got hurt at thousands of meters away under the sea. You just can’t see its sharp wound now’. He places the clip which is metaphor as a stone back to his palm and continues: ‘it happens to the mountains too. We can’t see how it got hurt by the Pacific’. This irrelevant answer reminds me of the images constantly appear in Iyo’s works: the roots connect with every existing objects on site; an object looks like a sapling or a fish jumping out of water.

《魚群的智慧》 Photo provided by IPCF