All of a Sudden I Held a Carcass in My Hands (and I Could Not Bury It)
Collection:CSM Museum & Study Collection
Date: June 2022
Artist: Yulin Huang
Medium: Text in charcoal on primed wood, various small plastic toys, twigs (wood), two taxidermy needles and two empty boxes of Windsor and Newton writing ink.
Object number: MISC.2023.1158.CC.1-20
DescriptionDescription from the artist: “Under the playful eye of the dilettante, I obsess over each collected object with a pretend scientific ardour whilst utilising language as my main medium to reflect upon the inexplicable anxiety and paranoia each Thing brings with it - dead or alive.
All of a Sudden I Held a Carcass in My Hands (And I Could Not Bury It) is a painful sanctuary of simultaneous grieving and celebration - an investigative graveyard whereby I make a desperate attempt to preserve what is left of these objects that confronted me, Owned me for a certain period of time; namely The Outmoded Camera, the plastic toys, the displaced photographic slides, and the metaphorical haunting of The Train. [and with The Train, I feel I AM THE CARCASS. IT RENDERS ME MOTIONLESS BY MOVING ME.] And here I will grieve. And here I will rest,”
The installation is a grappling of the possible death of objects I have collected over the years. The Outmoded camera was found at a car boot sale - a Casio QV-10, the first consumer LCD digital camera, that did not work anymore in present time. The obsession of wanting to revive this carcass consumed me in writing. The object seemed to call out to me in the same tone as the conceptual Train that has haunted me relentlessly as a fascinating metaphor/framework for thinking. The photographic slides were from the family archive of New Zealand, but I had no memory of being part of them. The displaced nostalgia holds a distinct discourse with the plastic toys, all collected from the traditional chuo chuo le/poking lottery games found easily on Taiwanese streets. Overall the work is a time capsule of numerous confrontations with certain objects - a departure of a life-long dialogue of living amongst them.
All of the wood pieces were scavenged from the Archway workshop and written on in the studios, with the branches collected from the park nearby as well. The outmoded camera was also discovered at a local car boot sale in Archway, which acted as the catalyst of this exploration. This installation certainly became a personal capsule for my wonderful time there.
All of a Sudden I Held a Carcass in My Hands (And I Could Not Bury It) is a painful sanctuary of simultaneous grieving and celebration - an investigative graveyard whereby I make a desperate attempt to preserve what is left of these objects that confronted me, Owned me for a certain period of time; namely The Outmoded Camera, the plastic toys, the displaced photographic slides, and the metaphorical haunting of The Train. [and with The Train, I feel I AM THE CARCASS. IT RENDERS ME MOTIONLESS BY MOVING ME.] And here I will grieve. And here I will rest,”
The installation is a grappling of the possible death of objects I have collected over the years. The Outmoded camera was found at a car boot sale - a Casio QV-10, the first consumer LCD digital camera, that did not work anymore in present time. The obsession of wanting to revive this carcass consumed me in writing. The object seemed to call out to me in the same tone as the conceptual Train that has haunted me relentlessly as a fascinating metaphor/framework for thinking. The photographic slides were from the family archive of New Zealand, but I had no memory of being part of them. The displaced nostalgia holds a distinct discourse with the plastic toys, all collected from the traditional chuo chuo le/poking lottery games found easily on Taiwanese streets. Overall the work is a time capsule of numerous confrontations with certain objects - a departure of a life-long dialogue of living amongst them.
All of the wood pieces were scavenged from the Archway workshop and written on in the studios, with the branches collected from the park nearby as well. The outmoded camera was also discovered at a local car boot sale in Archway, which acted as the catalyst of this exploration. This installation certainly became a personal capsule for my wonderful time there.