CEMELESAI TAKIVALET

In Cemelesai’s drawings ‘Plant series’ (2014–2015) presented at Taipei Biennial 2020, the plants, fungi, and other forms of vegetation, depicted with a great deal of precision and detail with their geometric and repetitive patterns, are the result of intense observation. The artist, however, could not look at his subjects directly and drew from recollection because some of the plants that he had seen as a child seem to have disappeared today.

In 2017, in the South of Taiwan, a group of young people from Cemelesai’s tribe contracted a mysterious disease after doing field research in their traditional territories. This incident reminded him of the legends told by elders concerning certain territories that should be protected from human intervention, which led him to draw large-scale representations of the viruses and bacteria released from the wild due to human intrusion (Virus Series, 2020). With their tentacles, their sinuous shapes, and their mandibles, the strange creatures float on the walls with a disquieting air. These works are not without recalling the Gaia hypothesis, formulated by inventor James Lovelock and biologist Lynn Margulis, which postulates that the Earth Surface (the Critical Zone) is a complex self-regulating system where Every single element—rocks, gas, minerals, water, atmosphere, soil—has been modified by the action of life forms, notably bacteria. As in Cemelesai’s mural, featuring a reaction from the forest after human intrusion, if Gaia is attacked, it may strike back in a retroactive loop.