Marshal Tie Jia – Turtle Island

Overview

Chia-Wei Hsu's video engages with the history of a tiny island off the coast of Matsu, which is situated in the Taiwan Strait. The island is under the commandment of a local god called the " Marshal Tie Jia," a frog deity. This deity originated from a temple on Wu-Yi Mountain in China, which was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution when the deity migrated to Matsu. In Hsu's work, the island is used as a stage. Employing the cinematographic device of the "green screen" - a generic background replaced in the post-production process with any other background image - Hsu places a fictional version of the original tiny temple on the island, which has long since been replaced by a dilapidated bunker.