What's going on around the globe Kuo Hui-chan leaves her home fully dressed every day, but she doesn't always stay that way - at least not during the three years it took the performance artist and photographer to create a series of public nude works. 'Expressing the purity of the human body through the physical ambiguity of androgynous forms' is what the Taipei-based Kuo sought to express. Viewing her work, there's none of the shyness sometimes associated with nudity. Born in Ilan, Taiwan, Kuo grew up among fields and lush mountains. So, choosing to perform in a rice paddy was natural, she says - although not necessarily in the nude. She admits to hesitating when she disrobed, but says it was all part of the 'spontaneous gestures that the natural environment evoked', resulting in the Float series (2003). Although captured in the buff, Kuo says she digitally removed 'the three dots', leaving her sexless 'because as long as you are dressed it symbolises something. The purest form of the human body is nudity'. In the Bubble series (2001), Kuo adopts foetal positions, enclosed in greenish egg sacs. In one piece, several Kuo-filled sacs are attached to each other. From this came the Tube series (2001), in which she poses nude on trains in an attempt to communicate her perplexity about the human condition and a longing to understand it. Of the Taipei metro train cars, she says: 'In this circumstance, we tend to have a more critical view of others - anything outside our own standards is considered weird.' And perhaps weird is what viewers think when they see the image of Kuo and her clone resting its head on her lap, as if seeking comfort and sympathy. Another image of Kuo is reflected in the train window, fully clothed. Continuing with her play on the imagined and the real, the Artificial Garden series (2002) was shot in a storeroom of an artificial flower shop that the artist found while looking for a flat to rent. In the piece, Kuo stands in a garden of sorts filled with loud flowers and a swarm of artificial butterflies. How she managed to transform the space, disrobe, perform and capture the images without getting caught by the flat owners isn't disclosed. In the Mimicry series (2005), Kuo abandons nudity. She stands against decaying walls, metal doors and tiled walls. The surfaces seem three-dimensional. But move closer and the protrusion reveals itself to be Kuo, camouflaged and seemingly dissolving into the tiles or moulding with a decaying wall. The work is at once bright and depressing. Kuo says she's now bored with her body and wants to change focus. She's unsure what that focus might be, but a bisected wooden skull covered with photographic strips of her head might allow a peek into this quirky artist's world. Her work will be on display at Taiwan New Arts Unit in November.
