Picnic

"My 'picnic' is a mysterious journey meticulously planned for me by someone else." — Wu Mei-chi

Wu Mei-chi's latest photobook uses the picnic as a metaphor for the banquets of life, exploring human relationships and bonds through a fascination with objects.

"I don't know why, but I imagined all sorts of scenarios where I could picnic with him again. As if possessed, I started taking out all the clothes, blankets, sheets, and curtains from my wardrobe, including my favorite light blue swimsuit, and cut them all up in one go. In my tiny rented room of less than 6 ping, I pieced them together bit by bit into the mat we would spread on the ground during a picnic."

Picnic expresses abstract emotions through still-life photography. In Wu Mei-chi's observations, regardless of the power balance in a relationship, both parties must learn to accept and maintain peace, even if sometimes reluctantly or forced to accept the other's goodwill.

Wu Mei-chi embarks from a private picnic invitation, using a series of striking collage images to allude to the process by which human emotions change at unknowable moments—perhaps due to the weather, perhaps due to tone of voice, or perhaps for no reason at all. She accepts the reality that human psychological states are uncontrollable and instead delves into the creative world of collage and scene-making; in the process of unrestrained expression, she reclaims the possibilities of a picnic. Within a small picnic mat are buried despotism, elation, bewilderment, bittersweetness, impermanence... these are flavors that are difficult to appreciate without experiencing them firsthand.

Artist Wu Mei-chi (b.1989) is skilled at handcrafting impossible, vivid light and shadow scenes, where illusory spaces override common sense. In the process of cutting through dimensional space, ordinary objects transform into still lifes with a powerful stance, and the creator's posture is like that of a child-hearted creator, unwilling to let go once playfulness begins.