Artists: Robert Gober - Han Feng - Wang Zhibo - Brook Hsu - Xue Ying - Lai Chih-Sheng

Cooked animals have long become a familiar image in our culture. We consume, look at, and use these images every day, yet rarely think about the lives that came before them.

Using the image of the cooked animal as a point of departure, this exhibition looks again at what everyday experience often causes us to overlook. It is not a show about what we eat. Rather, through the relationship between animals, food, and the kitchen, it reflects on the absence of empathy toward life, as well as the emotional tensions and human relationships hidden within daily life.

From slaughter to the dining table, the vulnerability of life has always existed alongside our conscious or unconscious ability to look away. Bodies that are cut, named, and served gradually lose their identity as living beings and become objects to be viewed, exchanged, and consumed. At the same time, the kitchen—the place where this transformation takes place—extends beyond its practical function. It is where food is prepared, but also where emotions and memories accumulate. For some, it is a space of care and intimacy; for others, it holds experiences of restraint, discipline, conflict, and things left unspoken. The kitchen becomes a site onto which personal and collective memories are continually projected.

Bringing together works by several artists, the exhibition explores these ideas through a range of recurring images and materials. Animals, food, knives, dishcloths, soap, and kitchen scenes form a network of visual clues rich with metaphor. Moving from life to food, from body to object, from traces of use to emotional residue, these elements gradually drift away from their original meanings through repeated use and observation, becoming vessels for desire, memory, and trauma.

During the exhibition, visitors will also be invited into a subtle and open situation of shared dining. Food is not an experience separate from the artworks, but another way of entering the exhibition. As people gather around a table and engage in conversation, the emotional questions that run through the exhibition may begin to surface, carried by both taste and dialogue.