ARTS BEYOND DISTANCE SEASON 1

Au Sow Yee

INXO Online Talk Series

Guest Speaker:

Au Sow Yee

About her:

Au Sow Yee, born in Malaysia, she now lives and works in Taipei. Au’s works focus mainly in questioning, exploring as well as expanding the relation between images, image making, historiography, politics, and power, through video installation and other mediums. A finalist for the 2018 Asia Pacific Breweries Foundation Signature Art Prize and Han Nefkens Foundation – Loop Barcelona Video Art Award 2018, Sow Yee’s works were exhibited in MMCA (Seoul), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), HKW (Berlin), Shanghai Rockbund Art Museum, Singapore Film Festival among others. Sow Yee is a guest writer for online magazine No Man’s Land and co-founded Kuala Lumpur’s Rumah Attap Library and Collective in 2017.

About his work:

Mengkerang Project: Pak Tai Foto 2015

Host:

Tan E-Jan (CEO of INXO Productions)

Date:

14/04/2020 (Saturday)

Time:

8pm – 9pm

Key Takeaway:

Sow Yee was trained in theatre, experimental film making and new media arts.
It’s a very natural process for Sow Yee to create work especially when there are issues or things that interest her or question on, she will explore it.
Sow Yee shares about her motivation on how she started the ‘Mengkerang Project’, when the question of ethnicity was being raised and gave her a huge impact. The project started as a response. She also shares her research with different methods and process of her project.
Sow Yee says creation or artworks for her is always a long time process, is not a one and off thing. It is important to put herself together to work on something regardless of the situation change.
For Sow Yee, a successful artist is when the audience really look into your work and want to make a conversation with you. Like it or not, being criticize is a very precious thing and important if audiences give responses.
Sow Yee says being positive to critics but not swiftly react to critics. It’s a good thing not to make any fast changes, it might not be the perfect solution and run away from what you originally wanted to do. Listen and let it cool down for a while and re think about it.
Sow Yee shares some difference of creative environment and audience response between Malaysia and Taiwan.
Sow Yee thinks that artist is someone to raise questions rather than to give answers. Bringing up question is important. By questioning, you might be revealing something behind the normality. It is like a quest or an adventure. From asking question, you might go to another new dimension.
Sow Yee’s advice is to do what you really interested in.

Podcast download:

Podcast Intro & Outro Music Credit:

ACOUSTIC BREEZE | ROYALTY FREE MUSIC
Composer: Benjamin Tissot