The Galápagos Project
roaming with the dawn: snow drifts, rain falls, desert wind blows | 2012
4,000 hand-formed miniature glass animals | dimension of plinth: 1,000 x 700 x 60 cm | dimensions of glass animals variable.
Referencing Vonnegut’s book Galápagos, the flora and fauna of Galápagos Archipelago, biblical stories, and semiotics, Galápagos Project is the overarching project title for interconnected yet singular groups of works shown in Berlin, Singapore, Manila, Brisbane, Kuandu, Sài Gòn (HCMC), Cuenca (Ecuador), New York City, and other cities in the Great Plains of the United States. Chung spent a great deal of time studying the decline of agricultural and industrial towns in Yamaguchi, Japan, where she visited defunct coal mines and small communities in the mountain areas around Akiyoshidai plateau. Galápagos Project is also drawn from Chung’s research of the 1930’s Dust Bowl in the Great Plains and other sites in Manila (Philippines) and Taipei (Taiwan). An interweaving of historical fact and fiction, and alternating temporal sequences, resonate throughout the various chapters of the project. Recurring themes include deindustrialization, depressions, deluges, post-apocalyptic landscapes, and great migrations.
In most components of Galápagos Project a mass migration takes place, whether it be tortoises, rabbits, buffalo, giraffes, or elephants. At times clustered in small formations clinging to angled surfaces of seemingly submerged partial structures, as in twigs, bones, rocks and the Giant Tortoise and falling blue sky, frozen raindrops, or moving en masse by the thousands across pristine ice surfaces (roaming with the dawn – snow drifts, rain falls, desert wind blows, 2012), the viewer is transported into a fairy tale evoking the dawn of a prehistoric or post-apocalyptic age. Chung presents a veritable glass menagerie, fragile hordes of crystalline creatures touching our senses. The nomadic project appears to be a futile trajectory for these delicate beings, yet their collectivity signals strength and fortitude. While Chung’s Galápagos Project can be seen as an allegorical fantasy that imagines our future ruins, it also suggests a new beginning.
Related Exhibitions:
7th Asia Pacific Triennial | QAG GOMA, Brisbane | 2012