Shao-Feng Hsu
Cavitation
Breathe Through Skin Installation
Breathe Through Skin Installation
Diver
Rainbow Fish
Water Striders
Night Swimming
Artist Bio
Shao-Feng Hsu is a visual artist whose work focuses on the interaction of humans and aquatic environments. From his native Taiwan — where he trained as a competitive swimmer — to Australia and the Bay Area, Shao-Feng Hsu has immersed himself in aquatic cultures in an ongoing study of the impact of the Anthropocene Era on our waters. In December 2017, he was selected to participate in Angkor Photo Festival Workshop, where he documented life in a village without proper sanitation and running water. Expanding on the projectʼs themes back in Taiwan, he collaborated with the environmental NGO, RE-Think, through activism, conservation and education. He is a graduate of the Creative Practices program at the International Center of Photography and a recipient of Rita K. Hillman Award of Excellence. In 2020, he co-founded Fotodemic.org and co-runs Cademy.biz. He is a current MFA candidate at California College of Arts and holds a Bachelors of Electrical Engineering from Feng Chia University in Taichung City, Taiwan(2012).
Artist Statement
I make experiential photo-based work that focuses on water and the aquatic environment. Using both analog and digital methods of image-making, my work shifts the way in which water is traditionally looked at. The work longs to transcend a boundary, the perspective from human eyes to the point of view of water itself and the creatures living within it. This immersion of the viewer in an intimate perspective is an essential shift in our era of climate change.
Since the invention of photography, seascapes, and waterscapes have been photographed mainly on the surface. Underwater photography has been utilized predominantly for scientific rather than artistic purposes. My process expands on what already exists, diving deeper into the complexity of where land meets water. Each project I embark on reshapes my own representation and understanding of the aquatic environment.
I grew up in Taiwan, an island nation, and trained as a competitive swimmer my entire childhood and throughout University. Living near the intersection of water and land drew my obsession to question, research, and create around aquatic space. Since moving to San Francisco, I often find myself physically immersed in the bay. My sensations are amplified in the chilly bay water. The sound of the Pacific. The saltiness of oysters. The ruins of Sutro Baths and Nike missile sites. The slime of Kombu.
My most recent three projects offer a range of mediums and approaches:
Coastal Access, is a visual poem in zine form that I made during the first year of the Covid pandemic. It is a series of black & white images that examines and documents my journey of finding a path to the coastline or body of water while being mostly quarantined at home. The work not only explores the geology of the Northern California Coastline but reflects upon the collective mental space of that time.
In Breathe Through Skin, I build a visual representation underneath the waterline. Through immersion in the colors of water, I mimic the disoriented feeling of tumbling, swimming, or drowning in it. This work exists both as a photobook and as an installation. The book guides the viewer through the first-person point of view, generating a mental journey through an edited sequence of single and diptych images. The installation format is designed as a flow of irregular displacements. It develops a sensation of distortion that imitates the movements of water.
During evenings underneath the new moon, I created the analog piece, Night Swimming. The work consists of a grid of water photograms exposed and developed in the pitch dark at an outdoor pool. While holding my breath underwater with a weight upon my chest, I exhaled bubble rings and flashed light onto light-sensitive paper. What appears is an original imprint of my breath, an internal expression of intimacy with water.