Sampling

PENG Hsing-Kai A few years back, Yu-Ju, you mentioned how the vibrant colours in your work were influenced by traditional Taiwanese temple culture, and that you were inspired by music and sound to structure your visuals. Has your thinking changed since then?

LIU Yu-Ju Now I think the bold colours of temples are just part of my upbringing. They shaped some of my instinctive reactions in design, but they don't define my visual language. I’ve also realised that music and sound are just effective mediums that trigger my visual responses. When I hear sounds, they produce images in my mind, and this connection between sound and image has become part of my creative process. It’s more of a method than a theme.

That said, I still think about my work through the lens of Taiwan’s cultural history. Even if my style doesn’t quite fit in here, it’s actually the result of transforming Taiwan’s colour vocabulary into my work. I want to re-present these visual elements from a different perspective. Taiwan is a place of constant cultural exchange, and that diversity gives me the freedom to explore new possibilities.

If I were to describe it visually, my work feels like the branches and leaves growing from a tree. It might not be the trunk, but it’s still part of the whole tree, coexisting with everything else.

PENG Hsing-Kai That’s a really interesting point. We often say that artists “reference a culture,” but more often it’s actually about the sensory triggers in someone’s formative years. It can’t simply be viewed as appropriation—it’s inseparable from their lived experience. Like in North Sydney Park, there's an “orchestra” section where kids can pick any instrument and just bang away freely. Or when we first visited Seoul, we were surprised to see that playgrounds for toddlers were entirely black. A culture’s aesthetic style often just grows naturally out of everyday life.

Yaode JN Exactly. And although Yu-Ju’s use of colour looks rich, she rarely uses complex tones. In Taiwan, what we’re exposed to is often pure, saturated colours. Even on a professional level, visual design here still heavily relies on strong, primary hues. There’s very little use of subtle, transitional, or ambiguous tones.

LIU Yu-Ju I just listened to a podcast yesterday where the host mentioned taking her child to a Japanese children’s bookstore and noticing how most of the books used low-saturation colours—she found that fascinating. My family used to run a corner shop, and as a kid I grew up surrounded by all sorts of colourful packaging, with odd graphics and type everywhere. Maybe that visual environment influenced my aesthetic without me even realising it—but it wasn’t something I deliberately chose.

Yaode JN Andy, your work often features melting and distortion, creating these body horror-like images that aren't quite human, with rocky textures but biological characteristics. What first drew you to making those kinds of visuals?

Andy Chen I never set out to make them feel horrific. It probably came from the sticky, doughy feel of clay. For me, image-making is more like a playful process, kind of like observing microorganisms.

I used to go out shooting with Lou—he loved photographing complex structures. I found myself more drawn to textures, especially the ones we don’t usually notice. I’d deliberately make those details the focus, highlight them in different ways, and build a new world around them. That gives me a sense of ease—like the overlooked parts of everyday life can become their own visual language. I’ve only recently realised that maybe I’m just a bit odd.

PENG Hsing-Kai LIU Yu-Ju Yaode JN Recently!?

Andy Chen Recently… yeah, I’ve been spiralling into weird thought holes more easily.

PENG Hsing-Kai Yaode, you used to incorporate faces and flesh a lot, but more recently you’ve been referencing mythology and classical sculpture. What does that shift mean to you?

Yaode JN I haven’t really thought about it much. Do I like living things? Or do I like the sense of order in organic forms—order? Is there order in the human body? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not sure if there’s an actual connection between flesh and order, but it does seem to relate to some mathematical or physical concepts. Fractal “self-replicating” structures might explain, to some extent, my confusion about how life becomes life.

Ancient symbols in classical art are incredibly nuanced. In Michelangelo’s Pietà, for instance, Mary Magdalene’s hand never actually touches Christ. Artists across different periods have collectively constructed this subtle sense of spatial tension—not merely as a matter of technique, but as a reflection of their era’s mindset. These expressions reveal a disassembly of meaning and an atmospheric strangeness born from the gaps between signs. I find that fascinating.

At times, the meaning embedded in the original work resonates with the concepts I want to express, or aligns with the client’s brief—such as in Queer Mafia (流鶯氓匪) and Ezra (以斯拉). That’s why I choose to incorporate it. I’m not opposed to using local references either, but the lack of open access to historical archives in Taiwan does place limits on creative possibilities.

PENG Hsing-Kai Sampling originally came from music, but we’ve translated it into a way of reclaiming the value of imagery. For instance, Hingston Studio’s Cocoa Sugar reinterpreted Waldemar Świerzy’s Nocny Kowboj, and the image’s life carries on. Art reflects the collective obsessions of its time. Visual archives carry a kind of temporal spiral—some symbols can transcend eras, others are locked in a specific time. These cross-temporal exchanges help form a kind of group will among creators, and maybe that’s the most beautiful thing about being human.