Taiwanese artist, Nung-Hsin Hu, produced Incurable Nostalgia as a multimedia project, including a 16mm film loop installation, videos, drawings, and sculpture during her 3-month residency at the 18th Street Arts Center. This project is a reflection of the artist's current status after losing her childhood home and the processes of rethinking and searching for the meaning of home, both literal and metaphorical. Incurable Nostalgia is currently on view at the 18th Street Arts Center’s (Olympic Campus, 1639 18th Street, Santa Monica) Atrium Gallery through January 22, 2021.
Nung-Hsin Hu’s exhibition and residency are supported by Taiwan Academy in Los Angeles and the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan. Hu’s project takes inspiration from The Future of Nostalgia by Svetlana Boym, which describes how Modern Nostalgia has transformed from being a curable disease in the 17th century, then going beyond individual psychology and eventually becoming a public epidemic, mourning for an impossible return.
Hu intends to reflect on how we are experiencing the collective grief and longing for the world we knew, and the normality that we may never return to under the current pandemic era. Hu also examines how the months-long lockdown, stay-at-home orders, climate crises, and travel restrictions have shifted our notion of home and altered the relationship between our body and space.
Incurable Nostalgia will also include site-specific performative elements where the artist will utilize her temporary “home,” the studio space and new surroundings, to create multimedia work juxtaposing the past and present, dreams and everyday life representing her processes of adaptation.
Hu will host a dinner party conversation with special guests Hitomi Iwasaki (Director of Exhibitions and Programs at the Queens Museum), Jessica Kairé (Artist and Co-founder of Contemporary Art Museum in Guatemala, NuMu), and Frida Cano (Assistant Curator / Artist Residency Coordinator at 18th Street Arts Center) on Thursday, December 3rd at 5 PM PST/ 8 PM EST/ Friday, December 4th at 9 AM Taiwan time via Zoom.
Nung-Hsin Hu, born in Taiwan, is a U.S.-based interdisciplinary artist who interweaves video, sculpture, performance, and installation in her practice. Her work intends to reveal the invisible status, articulate the unconsciousness, and perform the vulnerability through a poetic and whimsical approach. Her current projects utilize analogue film combining traditional and direct film-making techniques to address a sense of loss, archive the ephemeral and discuss the subjects of time and memory. Hu has exhibited and screened widely both in the U.S. and abroad, including Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York, Videoformes Festival in France, Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires, and Oil Street Art Space in Hong Kong.
Online Exhibition Page:
<a href="https://18thstreet.org/event/nung-hsin-hu-welcome-home/" d