The videos of Chen Chieh-Jen provide a platform for the forgotten and disenfranchised of Taiwan’s industrial boom and subsequent bust. The mid-twentieth century brought prosperity to Taiwan as the Western world began outsourcing production to capitalize on cheap labor. Taiwan’s economy benefited from this shift in global productivity, and quickly established factories all over the countryside where workers were siphoned in to live in dormitories and devote their lives to the support of this economic boon. However, as the decades wore on companies found other countries with even cheaper labor, and their operations left Taiwan behind. In all this the individual worker was forgotten and left to fend for him or herself.

Chen’s video Factory (2003) is a haunting reminder that as forgotten as a group may be in the eyes of the public, they still are left to struggle through their lives. For this work, Chen invited a group of workers to return to the abandoned factory where they spent up to two decades. The thirty minute film shows these now elderly workers, mainly women, moving through their old work place amid machines, calendars, clocks and chairs that were left behind or moved in to create a semblance of the former working environment. In a series of scenes the workers reenact the movements of sewing jackets down to the minutia of threading a needle. It is a heartbreaking moment as elderly hands and eyes try to perform suc a precise task. Chen pans so smoothly and slowly through the space that it is at times unclear if the workers are moving in slow motion or real time. The women did not wish to speak, and to this end, the film is completely silent. Interspersed in between the contemporary footage is vintage footage of protests of the closings in the 1960s. The vintage footage gives the viewer a glimpse into the world that was taken away.

In 2007, this work was included in an exhibition at the Asia Society in New York called “Condensation: Five Video Works by Chen Chieh-Jen.” This exhibition was the first major solo exhibition for the artist in the United States. However, his works have been shown internationally for several years, being included in the Bienal de São Paulo (1998), Venice Biennale (1999), Taipei Biennial (2002) among others. [UBS]