- Date 2025.03.08 – 05.11
- Venue TheCube Project Space
The Rocking Dream: Au Sow Yee × Chen Yow-Ruu Solo Exhibition
Au Sow Yee × Chen Yow-Ruu (Her Lab Space)
Comments on the Finalist
Using the double imagery of “rocking” and “rock,” this exhibition reflects the drifting circumstances of stateless individuals caught in geopolitics. AU Sow Yee and CHEN Yow-Ruu bring narrative momentum from theater into contemporary art, ingeniously blending various forms of storytelling, including news archives, oral recordings from stateless children, miniature scenes, and musical segments. Starting with Malaysian folk legends, the exhibition immerses the audience in soundscapes interlayered with the virtual and the real, reflecting complex issues of borders and identity. In a compact gallery space rich with vocabulary, the exhibition engages the audience’s perception effectively. The two artists display a subtle concern for different states of survival and existence, even blurring the line between documentary records and artistic expression. (Commentator / CHIANG Fu-Chin)
Artwork Introduction
This exhibition expands on a previous piece, titled Bad Dream Rocking a.k.a The Rocking Malay(a), commissioned by the Singapore Art Museum in 2024. It draws on the Malay folktale “Si Tanggang” to explore the unstable boundaries of identity, blending video, sound archives, and miniature models to reveal the intricate shifts among legend, memory, and politics. The work brings together interviews with stateless children in Malaysia alongside retellings and reinterpretations of the folktale. The exhibition title, The Rocking Dream, plays on the word “rocking”: while “rock” implies stability and strength, “rocking” suggests swaying and instability. The exhibition highlights this contrast between the solidity of stone and the restless motion of rocking, using it as a metaphor for the complex politics of constructing and deconstructing identity.
About the Artist
AU Sow Yee was born and raised in Kuala Lumpur and currently lives in Taipei. Her practice combines various creative forms, including moving images, conceptual art, and installation, to explore and expand the relationships among images, image-making, history, politics, and power.
CHEN Yow-Ruu was born in Kaohsiung and currently lives in Taipei. Specializing in theater directing and spatial arrangement, her practice explores local environments and sociocultural phenomena. By analyzing everyday sounds and using a self-reflective approach, she examines the connections among people, space, the body, and sound by observing lived experiences.
Her Lab Space was founded by theater director and artist CHEN Yow-Ruu in Kaohsiung in 2016. Since 2017, Chen has frequently collaborated with AU Sow Yee, a Malaysia-born, Taiwan-based artist, to create theatrical and performative video installations, theater projects, and performances that resist clear categorization.
Production Team
Sound Recordings with Epyi, Ryi and Sha from Buku Jalanan Chow Kit (BJCK, Malaysia) .
Video Production Credit
a work by Au Sow Yee × Chen Yow-Ruu
Producer | Chen Yow-Ruu
Performers | Kurt Hsiao, LU, Tsai Yiling, Tseng Hsin-Yen
Musicians | Winnie, Hu ChunChuan, Sylvain Chen, Wang Ching-Hsuan
Additional sound reenactment of Si Tanggang’s dialogue | Epyi, Ryi and Sha (BJCK, Malaysia)
Log Keeper | Wayne Pan
Craft Service | Ryan Lin
Director of Photography | Chen KuanYu
First Assistant Camera | Yang Che Chi
Second Assistant Camera | Chen Yi-Fang, Lai Chung-Yi
Gaffer | Emile Peng
Best Boy | Chang Hsing Pei, Yang Yu Ming
Second Assistant Lighting | Yulii Deng, Jade Lin
Sound/Foley/Mixing | Feng Chih Ming
Sound Assistant | Chen Chieh Hsi
Music Composer/Arrangement | Winnie
Music Mixing | Odd Chou
Costume Designer | Center You
Production Designer | Cheng Hsuan Sun
Production Design Assistant | Jeong ZhiLong, Jamo Chen
Still Photographer | Lee Hsin-Che
The Rocking Dream
Exhibition Production Credit
Audio Visual, Lighting, Installer ｜ Piccolo Perfectto
Painter, Carpenter ｜ Hsu Tsung Jen
Visuals & Program Book Design ｜ Lunbochilla
Organizers ｜ TheCube Project Space, Her Lab Space
Sponsors ｜ National Culture and Arts Foundation, Department of Cultural Affairs, Taipei City Government
A production of Her Lab Space
