27 Apr Rochu Chiu
Residency Program : September – October 2021
September 2021
This is the first trip that Rochu undertakes since the global health crisis has struck. For this artist, traveling has always been a fundamental factor in her creative process. With a delicate and humorous approach, Rochu roams the territories, reflecting on human relationships and affective bonds in this era, profoundly intersected by technology and international movements.
The first month of her residence in Centro Negra has been, in a way, a continuation – or perhaps a closure – of a process that began during the period of confinement that she endured in Taipei, Taiwan. Moved by the restrictions imposed on physical contact and on expressions of affection as simple as hugs, Rochu started to reflect on the notion of distance (geographical but also between our bodies), wondering about the gestures that we have lost throughout the process of reacting to Covid-19. What has changed in us? How can we recover the closeness, the sense of belonging and the feeling of shelter? For Rochu, distance is not only a space that can be measured, but also a lack of a sense of belonging. On this occasion, she presents a video that compiles a series of actions where her body is printed, fusions with and takes shelter in the surroundings.
October 2021
In her second month as a resident, Rochu presents an installation that tells us about the tactile and the ephemeral.
Inspired by the paintings of Cuevas de la Serreta, in Cieza, and in one of the first workshops that the young people of Blanca did in Centro Negra, she started interpreting the hand silhouettes that she sees not only as an image or a shape, but as a trace that brings back the absent body that touched that surface.
Her gaze is inevitably affected by the pandemic. Moved by the restrictions imposed on physical contact and expressions of affection as simple as hugs, Rochu began to reflect on the notion of distance (geographical but also between our bodies), wondering about the gestures that we have lost throughout the process of reacting to COVID-19.
During the periods of confinement, we have had to content ourselves living our entire experience mainly through hearing and sight. Touching became a threat from which we are gradually recovering, returning with a value that had never been given before.
Rochu paints mainly with ink, and in an urban context. But in Blanca, observing the nature that surrounds us, and the earth that shows the passage of time when cracks, she reflected on the continuous transformation of everything, and the ephemerality of existence. That is why she has chosen to create with clay —so that the only footprint she leaves behind when leaving Blanca, are her reflections, imprinted on our consciousness.
