Aurora’s tears = dew
Myrrha’s tears = sap
Heliades’ tears = sap ≈ amber
tears of Marsyas’ mourners = river
Ouranos’ semen = sea foam
~

foam, slaver, froth, sperm is part of the ongoing research and performance project Tableau Vivant that investigates the politics of patriarchal oppression within Western Art History through a focus on the double movement of foregrounding the female figure and backgrounding nature. The foregrounding move installed a troublesome conflation of (male) sexual desire and societal virtues: if you desire the (nude) female body, you will desire the virtue for which she is an allegory (justice, chastity,...). The backgrounding of nature is equally disturbing: stripped of any agency, natural elements function merely as a symbol to add meaning to the overall narrative or moral of the artwork (for example the sea expressing the dark, chaotic and unpredictable ‘nature’ of women).
This installation subverts this foregrounding-backgrounding logic and traces the connections between Old paintings and today through gender, monstrosity and the sea. The immersive installation consists of two parts. Firstly, a sea-womb as a meshed archive of images from Art History and objects found on a beach north of Taipei, SOUND RECORDED WHERE. And secondly, a testicle-tomb with vibrant eruptions through a video with living images and a body performance.