PARASITIZING FAMILY
Moving between two separate households, dependent on shifting structures of care and survival.
WEN—HSUAN KUO / TAIPEI
FIFTEEN YEARS
FROM PARASITISM
TO SOVEREIGNTY
A life structured in fifteen-year intervals: from institutional dependence and dependent labor toward a long-duration practice that tests personal sovereignty.
0—60 / 1980—2040LIFE STRUCTURE / 0—60
PARASITIC RELATION: MILITARY
The military supplied survival, education, and order. It gave the individual a position while shaping the conditions of that position.
PARASITIC CREATION
Dependent labour premised on the works and artistic production of others.
LEAVING PARASITISM
The Fifteen-Year Sealing Project tests departure through 180 precommitted monthly actions. Sovereignty is not declared; it is practiced over time.
PRACTICE / METHOD
Honesty is a position. Rules are a constraint. Fifteen years is the scale of practice.
My practice begins with repeated questioning of my own experience. Rules do not guarantee truth. They limit my ability to alter, embellish, or evade a result, allowing execution, interruption, absence, and deviation to remain visible.
From age fifteen to thirty I depended on the military; from thirty to forty-five, I developed parasitic creation through mounting and the works of others. From forty-five to sixty, the Fifteen-Year Sealing Project turns departure into a concrete schedule: one action each month, 180 times. Traditional mounting supplies physical commitment; blockchain records supply an externally verifiable temporal index.
I. TIME / SOVEREIGNTY
0401
2026.07.18—07.31
Time Sealing
Fifty paper seals and a wallet registry form a non-image-based temporal index, setting material resistance against publicly verifiable blockchain records.
VIEW WORK →02
2026.01—2040.12 / 進行中
Fifteen-Year Sealing Project
Once a month, a date-coded amount of bitcoin is sealed—180 actions in total. Each empty position marks time not yet fulfilled.
VIEW WORK →03
2025.10.20
0.20251020 (Genesis Seal)
The first Sovereign Seal. 0.20251020 BTC, an on-chain record, and a 26-layer handmade-paper seal share one date-based structure.
VIEW WORK →PROCESS FILM ↗04
2025—持續中
Annual Sovereign Seal
Each year produces a retained A version and an exchangeable B version. A physical seal may be opened; its recorded event cannot be undone.
VIEW WORK →PROCESS FILM ↗TIME SEALING / 2026
In an age when AI-generated and digital images are highly malleable, an image alone is no longer sufficient evidence of a creative process. Time Sealing proposes a non-image-based temporal index, placing the physical resistance of traditional paper mounting against the digital irreversibility of Bitcoin timestamps. Sealed matter and open verification data turn irreversible labor and decentralized records into a self-archiving contemporary system. Here, time is not merely recorded: it becomes a medium through its irreversible passage.
II. SELF-PORTRAIT AS SYSTEM
2022—2027
SELF-PORTRAIT 1
2022A portrait formed through mounting structure and material traces rather than likeness.
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SELF-PORTRAIT 2
2023Repeated military slogans become density, labor, and institutional time.
VIEW WORK →PROCESS FILM ↗
SELF-PORTRAIT 3
2003—2024Documents from runway-repair training in 2003 to excavator certification in 2024. Medium: time.
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SELF-PORTRAIT 4
2025A framed GPT-5-generated analysis examines how AI's analytical language participates in constructing and reflecting the user's self-narrative.
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SELF-PORTRAIT 5
2026—持續中Daily ink self-portraits accumulate until image becomes illegible and time becomes measurable mass.
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SELF-PORTRAIT 6
2027–ONGOINGAll human–AI dialogue accumulated since 2024 forms the material, without retrospective selection by artistic value, correctness, or success. Formally situated in 2027, the work continues until the artist, the AI, or the conditions sustaining their relationship undergo an irreversible interruption.
VIEW WORK →PROCESS FILM ↗III. PARASITIC / RESIDUAL / PROCESS
2014—
01 / 2014—2023
WHEN THE WORK LEAVES｜PARASITIC CREATION
Two works｜Paper, ink, scroll knobs, hanging-scroll mounting structure
Parasitic Creation is the conceptual framework; When the Work Leaves comprises two distinct works. Once the original images depart, their hanging-scroll structures remain and become independently visible.
VIEW WORK →PROCESS FILM ↗
02 / 2023—持續中
Parasitic Series — Scroll Knobs (Seeking a Host)
White-glazed porcelain scroll knobs are produced in advance of their hosts and later travel with another artist's work.
VIEW WORK →
03 / 2023
Nonexistent Documents
Outer paper trimmed from other works forms 27 rectangles. Present in the exhibition yet absent from its official documents.
VIEW WORK →
04 / 2022 / 尺寸可變
Process Object: Game
Reusable mounting boards temporarily leave the drying process, support one another as sculpture, and may later return to work.
05 / 2022 / 尺寸可變
Process Object: Game II — Plaster Blocks
Plaster molds used to form ceramic scroll knobs are stacked to expose the material history of an intermediary tool.
ABOUT
WEN—HSUAN KUO
Born in Taiwan in 1980, Wen-Hsuan Kuo lives and works in Taipei. His education includes the Department of Painting and Calligraphy Arts at National Taiwan University of Arts and the Graduate Institute of Fine Arts at Taipei National University of the Arts. He is the founder of Boyi Shan Fang (Brad Studio), a practice dedicated to mounting and conservation.
His work develops from fifteen years of military experience and long-term professional practice in traditional mounting. It examines dependence, labor, records, self-description, time, and personal sovereignty.
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