Father Figures: Hou Chun-Ming Curated by Josef Ng

 A project first initiated during a residency program and exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art, and followed up during his retrospective exhibition in Taiwan, artist Hou Chunming has embarked on the 3rd phase of his The Asian Father Interview Project in Bangkok.

 

In a departure from the 2 previous phases which were undertaken within museums, the artist in this 3rd phase situates the interviews in locations related to the interviewees’ occupations in the attempt to relate to their everyday lives.

 

Hou sought collaboration with individuals in one-to-one exchange sessions, contextualising his artistic output through chats and sketches based on the recollections of the relationships between the interviewees and their fathers.  Hou is looking to the past; questioning and highlighting the memory of the role of the father. Or how we choose to see, acknowledge or even dispute, what a father figure may represent. This is the thematic axis of Hou’s project and exhibition.

 

Interviewees guided by a set of questionnaires wrote or sketched their recollections of their father. Hou would then produce a composition, in a form of a drawing or painting, based on the narratives of the interviewees. Immediately after, Hou invited the interviewees to respond to the visual images of their fathers he had created. This three-week process culminates in an on-site presentation at Gallery Ver.

 

These exchanges were undertaken with the aim of self discovery through others. According to the artist, “What makes me very curious is whether your father is an important part of your life. Does your father's existence matter to you? Or it does not really matter? Or it is merely a hurtful experience? What is the influence from your father? All these questions come from my desire to be a good father. I truly wish to understand how others be fathers through such exchanges, so that I could better learn to be a father.”

 

In an expansive set-up which includes pieces from the earlier phases, Father Figures is a multi-faceted exhibition filled with drawings, sketches, paintings, photography, text and video documentation. Through these diverse forms, they are all connected to Hou’s interest in how the mechanics of personal history work in the process of remembrance and imagination.