Wandering Through the Parallel Universe — Hsieh Chun-Te’s Brave the World

By Hsiang Yang (Poet, Cultural Critic)

It began with a simple invitation. I received a call from the photographer Hsieh Chun-Te, assuming it had to do with one of his photography projects. I arrived at the studio, where to my surprise, many familiar faces from the arts and literary world had gathered. We exchanged greetings and settled in—still unsure of what we were about to do. It wasn’t until we were asked to change into costumes—minimal “warrior garb” composed of a few strips of cloth—that I realized this was not a conventional portrait session. We were to enact a performance scene as “angelic warriors.”

Later, at the opening of Hsieh’s exhibition Brave the World at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, beneath the twilight skies and within the historic atmosphere of the plaza, the artist elaborated on his concept. I finally understood: Brave the World—part of his larger Parallel Universe Series—was both an exploration of the spiritual worlds of those living with dementia and an artistic meditation on memory, childhood, and dreamscapes.

Drawing from his decades of photographic experience and deep life reflection, Hsieh constructs not merely an exhibition, but a life philosophy enacted through multimedia: photography, sculpture, fashion, high-speed video, digital post-production, poetry, music, and movement. These elements converge to form a multidimensional cosmos where body and spirit, reality and imagination, gravity and flight, exist in uncanny parallel. The exhibition is not merely about courage—it is about coexistence across dimensions.

From the perspective of art sociology, Brave the World represents a creative engagement with Taiwan’s aging society. Through the camera lens, Hsieh addresses the urgent issue of dementia care. The project encourages Taiwan to confront the coming demographic realities while also expressing compassion for the caregivers who silently shoulder emotional burdens. In inviting a group of writers and intellectuals—including myself—to become part of this “art in action,” Hsieh advocates for a socially engaged aesthetic practice.

Room 205 featured the Silent series, five immersive installations telling the stories of families impacted by dementia. Projected onto large screens, the works include personal accounts from public figures such as Tan Ai-Chen, Ouyang Jing, Lang Tsu-Yun, Hsieh Yi-Chang, and Chen Shao-Wei. The theme of Brave the World emerges clearly here—an encouragement for families and companions of Alzheimer’s patients to persevere. These images do not isolate art from life but intertwine them, producing a deeply moving effect. Elsewhere, portraits of the elderly mothers of public figures Chen Yu-Hsiu and Sun Ta-Chuan—98-year-old Mrs. Chen and 105-year-old Mrs. Sun—render time visible: the texture of years speaks through stillness and motion alike, yielding a radiant grace.

From a poet’s perspective, one could call Hsieh a “photographic poet.” His lensing, his acute visual sensitivity, his narrative and imagistic style—everything carries a poetic resonance. The waterfall installation in Room 204, cascading across three walls, is nothing short of breathtaking. Defying gravity, the torrent flows in surreal suspension—its roaring volume balanced by delicate drips, its sound and sight a contrapuntal symphony.

In Room 203, the piece Witch 1×10 conjures a spectral, fantastical atmosphere. Black and white. Life and death. The real and the arcane unfold in tandem—striking and eerie.

The poetic continues in Room 202, with Milky Way: a farmhouse granary, the scent of straw, skylights open to constellations, rekindling the Taiwan countryside of the 1950s and ’60s. Childhood dreams, starry skies, whispered soliloquies—cosmic mysteries reflected in the eyes of a child. An aesthetic experience both unspeakable and profound.

Then came the piece in which I myself took part: This Is the War. Twelve warriors don garments barely covering the body, advancing in slow procession. As the warriors rise and rotate in suspended motion, they form tableaux of paradox—movement and stillness, body and spirit, death and life. Here, the concept of the “parallel universe” manifests as metaphor: a world where bravery emerges from vulnerability. As Hsieh writes in his accompanying poem:

“Upon the path of the path,
I bind myself into a flying sacrifice.
My weakness becomes the warrior within the war.”

Thus, Brave the World is more than photography—it is a total encounter with time, illness, and life. Beyond physical reality, Hsieh gestures toward one (or many) unknowable universes running in parallel. Through his work, I see not only a photographer concerned with society’s ailments, but also a poet reflecting on the existential dimension of our finite time. That, perhaps, is the very heart of Brave the World.