"Metal Odyssey," the winning exhibition of the 2024 Jimei x Arles "Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image," was jointly curated by Yi-Ning LIN and Chia-Shin YANG, and features artists Jess Ching-Wa LAU and Chia-Shin YANG. The award was co-launched by the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre and CHANEL, focusing on supporting young creative forces in photography and moving image art, and aims to discover and nurture outstanding young Chinese photography curators and researchers. After winning the award in December 2024, the project has moved into a deepening and implementation phase with support and will be showcased as an exhibition at the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing.

"Art is a way of taking distance. The pathological or therapeutic aspects exist, but just as catalysts." — Sophie Calle.^[1]

Metal Odyssey is an exhibition that serves as a meeting ground between "life stories" and "audiences." It combines the imagery of travel—suitcases and the experiences of patients (cases)—through the medical records of the artists and their family members. It delves into the traces of memories in life and reshapes our understanding of intimate familial relationships. The "metal" in the theme symbolizes medical instruments related to illness, and as the authority of these devices grows, the artwork delves deeper into the evolving relationship between the artist and caregiving. It emphasizes the intermediary role of metal instruments in medical cases while subtly hinting at the creative spark between the artist and curator, much like the traces left by a journey.

This exhibition revisits and reinterprets medical records, presenting a "documentary gesture" to portray the process of recovery as observed by others or as a personal journey from illness to healing. It draws an analogy to the "Odyssey" from Homer's epic, representing a challenging, lengthy, and perilous journey while also representing return, wisdom, courage, and resilience. The artworks further highlight the metallic sheen that emerges from the intersection of art and reality.

Chia-Shin Yang's works, rooted in the concept of "re-covery," analyze and replicate her private medical history and personal experiences of illness, from childhood to the present. In the installation 08773545, she integrates her mother's handwritten notes, sketch writing, and daily images. By reconstructing medical records in a "full-screen" format that challenges linear browsing, she transforms the archives into an immersive space for viewers to navigate. In addition, through a sound installation, After The Conversation, capturing mother-daughter dialogues, Yang further examines family dynamics and caregiving relationships, revealing aspects of family history and reflecting on the intertwining of memory, illness, and care.

Jess Ching-Wa Lau's art pieces, viewed through her own lens, document her father's journey from the discovery of cataracts to his post-surgery recovery. As her father's vision becomes increasingly blurred, the artist attempts to capture and illustrate the "blind field" between herself and her father, who suffers from an eye disease, through dynamic imagery. Her still images, titled Wildlands Behind, inspired by observations of her father's treatment process, prompt a re-examination of both her own and her father's physicality. The work captures partial shots of their bodies, offering an organic reassembly of memories. In her new moving image work, The Star Within Your Sun, Jess Ching-Wa Lau explores the concept that "humans cannot look directly at the sun." She replaces the artist's eyes with a lens made in the 1970s to capture this "moving landscape." Simultaneously, both the body and the tools collectively shape our experience of the world, as our organs, like the surrounding equipment, are constantly engaged in digesting, breathing, seeing, and hearing, echoing Heidegger's perspective in Being and Time.

The exhibition continues its "public engagement" initiative, as seen at the earlier phase of the project during the "2024 Jimei x Arles Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image Finalist Exhibition." It sets up a writing section, inviting and guiding the audiences to explore life stories from a semi-fictional, semi-real perspective through question-based writing materials. This expands the possibilities for co-creative writing and interweaves individual experiences to form a broader narrative field.

As pioneering writer Anaïs Nin once said, "We write to taste life twice—once in the moment, and once in retrospect." Curated to foster a deeper connection with the power of life-writing, this section encourages individuals to engage in self-reflection and storytelling as they confront illness and pain, opening up possibilities for personal exploration and expression. The audience's written responses serve as a form of "healing process" and simultaneously "affirm" the core curatorial theme—how to share personal experiences within the public domain?