Hsu Zheng, Sleigh Bells. Installation, 2018. The Sun Teaches us that History is Not Everything, Osage Gallery, Hong Kong, 2018.
The installation seeks to represent the negative chronological space left by my grandfather, Hsu Zheng who is a victim of the first wave of killings and disappearances of the White Terror era of Chiang Kai Shek’s nationalist campaign which started 1947. After a pacific student protest held on February 28th 1947, he was labeled by officials as one of the organizers of the protest and was taken away on March 15th never to be seen again. The piece consists of hanging sleigh bells from the ceiling at a height where the average person can reach up and touch them. Each bell measures the days from his disappearance to the opening of The Sun teaches us that History is not Everything, curated by Raphael Fonseca and held in Osage Gallery in Hong Kong (25.934 bells). This body of bells, consistent with the body of time since his disappearance, symbolizes the absence of The Disappeared: a volume of time that hangs over our heads, sounding out when we touch it, that we feel when we interact with it. The sleigh bell is an element often used in Taiwan for children’s jewelry to keep track of them around the house, a fact which only heightens the significance of this installation: it is an object that communicates ‘being’ to represent the days of absence of my grandfather.
