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Hunting Season for Bodiless Women
Review by Kevin You Singgan
- This review focuses on wen gum gum’s 2022 solo exhibition Good Will Hunting
In English-speaking queer culture, the term “hunting” is often used. In the past, non-mainstream sexual orientations required visiting forests, public restrooms, or other specific locations to find partners, often at risk of being outed or facing worse consequences. Today, these encounters happen on dating apps, where clothing hints and teasing gestures serve to locate partners and fulfill desire. In her solo exhibition The Will to Good Hunts, wen gum gum challenges contemporary art’s own “hunting” culture through a group of characters who have lost their bodies.
Molotov Bottle develops from her 2015 work Monster Bone Powder-1. It is one of the few pieces in the exhibition that retains the imagination of a normal body. At the entrance, a comic poster First Draw is framed and accompanied by a color illustration. In the comic, a mother explains to her child: “All women lose their bodies at age twenty. Their heads grow on their legs, but they still live perfectly fine.”
The exhibition space resembles a silent, near-black-and-white sci-fi dystopia or utopia erotic film. As visitors walk through, the resolution shifts from 240p to 4K depending on canvas size, brushwork, scene transitions, and contrasting backgrounds. Reflections glimmer off the leather pants of bodiless figures or off protective plastic sheets used during transport. They playfully remind viewers of limits: you can look, but you cannot touch. In the gallery, you have no hands. You are a bodiless observer. Your gaze becomes the act of hunting itself. Similar to mechanisms of abstinence or controlled release in certain sexual games, the artwork’s passive aggression allows viewers to enter leg fetishism and other practices deemed “abnormal” or “perverse” by the mainstream, experiencing flesh without color but full of shine, receiving stimulation beyond expectation.
Even before she became an artist, publisher, and pet social media account operator, wen gum gum had been constructing universes of bodiless and distorted humans. She was active in online forums and created video works using body-altering filters. In her 2022 solo exhibition The Will to Good Hunts, she transferred her previous vividly colored, eroticized works of religious and political icons into black-and-white bodiless figures. Beyond exploring taboos, this approach is a way of “writing to an admired person” expanded into a method of engaging with realities that are difficult to reach—freezing, enlarging, approaching, yet simultaneously creating distance.
Bodiless figures have no bodies—no hands, no chest—so their hips, legs, feet, and heels swell, capturing the gaze of the hunting scenario. Some faces are gender-neutral, but most display clear male or female physiological traits and clothing, often appearing female, performing in various scenarios: tossing Molotov bottles, stacking into towers, wearing thorns on bare feet while stepping on snake cages, catching fences with their genitals, displaying fashionable lower-body clothing, walking, urinating in public, or visiting museums.
While there are visual parallels with ORLAN’s Nude Descending the Staircase, wen gum gum does not respond to Duchamp’s gender gaze or consider Cubist perspectives in her work. She does not aim to critique or invert gender binaries but freely expands and plays with all possible gender and body expressions when female or feminine desire is enacted.
However, if the essential “body” in hunting truly disappears, and bodiless figures achieve satisfaction online or in the gallery, does the world lose a little color as a result?
- English translation by wen gum gum, for use on the artist’s personal website only.
- The Hunting Season of Bodiless Women, published in Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture ARTalks
游承彥評論 – 無身體女性的狩獵季節 刊登於台新銀行文化藝術基金會ARTalks 🪂
- 本評論聚焦於溫佳寧 2022 年個展《善的意志會狩獵》
一個穿著高跟鞋的人身體扳成九十度，頭穿過胯下看著你，健壯的雙腿從這個角度被凸顯，網格絲襪幾乎變成鐵絲做的，甚至可以當作血管。時間定格，想像畫面變成立體的，所有人的身體和雙手都消失了，頭直接被安裝在胯下，連接雙腿——這對某些人可能是一場惡夢，同時卻又是一場充滿裸體及戀物元素的春夢，一個同時使人極度抗拒卻又渴望的組合。
「狩獵」是英語同志文化時常使用的詞彙，冒著被出櫃或更嚴重的風險，非主流性向者以往必須前往森林、公廁等特定場所，現在則於網路交友軟體上，以衣著暗示、動作挑逗等方法尋覓對象滿足性需求。溫佳寧於「善的意志會狩獵」個展，正是以一群「失去身體」的角色，挑戰發生在當代藝術裡的「狩獵」文化。
《火瓶》發展自2015年的舊作《怪獸骨粉-1》，是展覽少數保留正常身體想像空間的作品。入場處漫畫海報《初引》附有木框和一張彩圖，漫畫中母親向孩子解釋：「所有女性在二十歲時身體都會消失，頭長到雙腿上，不過她們還是會活得好好的。」
接下來的展場近似完全黑白無聲的科幻異托邦／烏托邦情色電影，隨著腳步，畫質於240p至4K之間轉換，依據畫布大小、筆觸及跳接的場景和顏色相反的背景，閃爍於無身人類皮革褲擋的反光，或是以幾幅保留運送作品時包覆的塑膠膜，彷彿嬉笑地提醒觀眾現實的界與限：你可以看，但你不能碰。在畫廊裡你也沒有手，在畫廊裡你就是無身之人，僅止於目光的狩獵，如同「禁慾」、「控射」在某些性愛遊戲中的運作機制，畫作的被動攻擊使觀眾在意識到之前，就潤滑地進入戀腿癖等被一般人視為「畸形」、「變態」，沒有顏色卻溢滿光澤的肉體經驗，並且獲得比預料中更強大的刺激。
早在溫佳寧成為藝術家／出版商／寵物社群帳號經營者「溫金金 (wen gum gum) 」之前，她便著手策造形象上／實際上包含無身、變形人類的幾個宇宙。她活躍於網路論壇，同時以濾鏡特效改造人體製作錄像作品。2022年於福利社「善的意志會狩獵」個展中，她將過往彩度鮮明、情慾化宗教與政治偶像的創作歷史，移轉到黑白色「無身人」的「無身」上。除了挑戰不同的禁忌，這也是一種將「寫信給愛慕對象」，再進一步發展成面對所有「難以觸及現實」的創作方法，將它靜止／放大，接近它，但又同時創造距離。
無身人沒有身體——沒有手、沒有胸部，使得胯下、雙腿、腳掌、鞋跟腫脹，獲得如同狩獵場景裡的注視。畫作中，有些臉龐是中性的，但其實大部分輪廓及五官帶有明顯的二元男性／女性生理性別特質及服飾，以「女性」角色居多，安裝在無身人的各式表演上。帶著安逸舒適的表情，無身人丟火瓶、疊成塔、頭戴荊棘赤足踩蛇籠、以私處卡住籬笆尖銳處、展示時髦服裝（的下半身）、散步、在公眾場合小便、到美術館看展覽。
雖然與ORLAN「下樓梯的裸體」帶有相似的意象，溫佳寧卻不是以ORLAN回應杜象時期的性別凝視，或者如同杜象回應立體主義的方式思考；她沒有意圖特別針對性別的二元性進行批判，也不費力去反對、反轉，而是自在的擴展、把玩「女性／陰性」被慾望時各種可能的性別和身體形象。
不過，如果狩獵行為中重要的「身體」確實消失了，沒有身體的人們在網路和藝廊便成功獲得滿足，這個世界是否還真少了那麼點顏色？