A Big Red Coral

Proficient at raising discussion about the relationship between human and nature through objects, artist Ari Bayuaji sees ocean and land as one assemblage symbol of Nature. Bayuaji used green fishing nets as the common base of the two works, and adorned them with a variety of little fragments of objects like jades, glasses, beads and bones, etc. The fishing nets and the plastic fibers used to sew the small objects are found by Bayuaji from a beach in Bali, Indonesia which was filled with dreadful plastic wastes. He cleaned and deconstructed all the plastics ropes, giving them a new life as he later involved them in his works. What he put on top of the nets were not only objects collected both from Taiwan and across the world, but also a few ancient objects that were actually his family heirloom. These objects that his referred to as “heirlooms” were, in fact, coins and bronze that cannot be more ordinary to the ancient Chinese people; however, when his ancestors found them in their fields, they treasured these foreign object so much as if they were given by the gods, and carefully reserved them generation after generation. Bayuaji incorporated these old pieces into his works as he explores how the value of objects changes between time and space.