​ © 2024 C. Liu

A complete story: between the strait

2014
12:46 minutes
double channel installation
colour digital video, sound
* due to specific sound design use of headphones is suggested

​'A complete story: between the strait' is an artist video exploring the oral history and lived experience of the relocation to Taiwan from mainland China as a result of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. There are two simultaneous interviews- one with the artist herself and the other with Yuan- to juxtapose their families' life stories before, during and after the War and their own experience in the imagined community of the Chinese cultures.

The work takes on a specific context to examine the symmetric quality of diaspora by looking into the real stories from both Taiwan and China as in 1949 two million individuals moved with the Nationalist to Taiwan and could only revisit their families and relatives after the travel ban of almost forty years.

The artist's maternal family relocated from Chongqing, China to Taiwan as Nationalist veterans in 1949, while Yuan is from Chongqing, China and received her visiting relatives at home who moved to Taiwan as part of the 1949 relocation. In the same generation but from different sides of the strait, the artist and Yuan each tells half of the story and together give a complete story.