Wu Chia-Yun
on the way home
UP Gallery

A lingering melancholy suffuses the moving-image works that featured in “on the way home,” an exhibition of three short films by the Taiwanese artist and filmmaker Wu Chia-Yun. The Farewell (2013), A Falling Dust (2017), and Portray a State (2018–20) explore age-old existential questions by way of narratives saturated with feelings of grief and loneliness. Predominantly shot in the early hours, or with cold, harsh lighting, the pervasive blue tones accentuate the sterile interior and exterior lives of the spaces and the characters (in other words, the physical and mental landscapes), highlighting Wu’s distant and removed cinematic style as well as her recurring interest in states of emptiness and emotional turbulence.