Vincent J.F. Huang (; born 1971) is a Taiwanese eco artist notable for his collaboration with the country of Tuvalu, which is forecast to be the first nation to disappear due to sea level rise, and his selection as the first Taiwanese artist to create a National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Huang also acted as an official delegate for the country of Tuvalu at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change during the 2012 COP18 session in Doha, Qatar, and caught media attention even earlier due to his guerrilla-style artworks and urban installations in the United Kingdom, Tuvalu, and Europe. Huang works primarily in the medium of visual art, especially sculpture and painting, and uses black humor and allusions to classical Chinese stories and images to contemplate the consequences of human consumption and the dangers of climate change.
Life and career
Huang was born in 1971 in Nantou County, Taiwan. After receiving his bachelor's degree in commercial art from National Taichung Institute of Technology in Taiwan in 1998, Huang obtained his MFA from Gray's School of Art, Robert Gordon University in Scotland in 2000. In the early to mid 2000s, Huang was a senior art lecturer at the Department of Visual Communication, ShuTe University and the curator of Art Space at Taiwan's premier research institution, Academia Sinica. In the late 2000s, Huang decided to diversify, studying for and receiving an EMBA from the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS; ranked the 7th best international EMBA program by Financial Times in 2012) in 2009. During his time at CEIBS, Huang also founded the first Contemporary Art Club at the institution and now acts as its general secretary.
During this period, Huang also participated in over forty group and solo exhibitions, including shows in London, Sydney, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, Beijing, Taiwan, and Hanover, Germany. Fascinated by consumer culture and the potential destruction of the Earth due to capitalism, Huang's art has long centered on environmental issues, and in 2009 after hearing Ian Fry's speech on behalf of the sinking Pacific island nation of Tuvalu at the UNFCCC COP15 Session in Copenhagen, Huang began his collaboration with the government of Tuvalu. Huang has traveled to Tuvalu twice to develop artworks onsite and was appointed an official delegate for Tuvalu at the UNFCCC COP18 Session in Doha, Qatar, where he staged an exhibition of black humor works on behalf of the island nation. A major peak in Huang's cooperation with the Tuvalu government was his appointment as their art representative at the 2013 Venice Biennale (the 55th International Art Exhibition-la Biennale di Venezia), where Huang created the first ever National Pavilion for Tuvalu and became the first Taiwanese artist to create a National Pavilion for the event. In late September, Huang will travel to the Arctic with the Arctic Circle project, which is sponsored by the Farm Foundation in New York, to continue his eco artworks for Tuvalu and plans to attend the UNFCCC COP19 session in Warsaw later this year.
Works
Huang's recent works include the following:
In the Name of Civilization
(2013/steel & motors): In this project, Huang transformed the original function of an oil pump into that of a killing machine, which brutally murdered natural species via viewer participation. As viewers squeezed a hand-held oil pump, rising sea levels registered on a gas meter and a giant oil rig was activated, decapitating a sea turtle and hanging the Wall Street bull. This specific work was then used to form a massive interactive installation at the 2013 Venice Biennale and served as a metaphor for human civilization's destruction of the natural environment.
Prisoner's Dilemma
(2013/fiber glass & digital print on scroll paper): Also featured at the Venice Biennale, Prisoner’s Dilemma depicts the Statue of Liberty kneeling to portraits of penguin terra-cotta soldiers (symbolic of the terracotta army) who represent the shadows of an ancient Chinese custom of creating objects for sacrifice—just as our current lifestyle negatively affects and "sacrifices" penguins. The Statue of Liberty in Prisoner's Dilemma does not single out the United States, but the statue is used to symbolize highly advanced human civilization and the fact that humans have become slaves to self-indulgence and desire and, in fact, prisoners to their lifestyles. If viewers can let go of their egos and kneel down in repentance in front of the sacrificed penguins, we may finally have an opportunity to set things right.