„When Potato Speaks”- a project statement

by Liao Wenfeng

Taking the sprouting potato as the starting point of my reflection, I created a site-specific public art project for Kunstkästen in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Seven paintings and four objects are displayed in eleven showcases in Schaffhausen.

As a species with strong vitality, potatoes constantly seek sunlight upwards and soil downwards, even in darkness. For me, sprouting potatoes represent the processes of growth, transformation, and reproduction, but they also evoke associations with sacrifice or cancerous growths. They symbolize the vitality that is in a state of flux. This vitality is an energy that grows out of darkness, which is neither positive nor negative in itself.

The painting series "Sprouting Potato Portraits" originated from a batch of potatoes 

I discovered in a cellar, stored there for many years. Although they were all of the same variety, their diverse forms after sprouting piqued my interest in depicting them. I portrayed each selected potato with a "portrait" at a size close to that of a human face.

In the installations and objects created for this project, potatoes, as organic and dynamic materials, inevitably become heterogeneous elements within the system, altering or even destroying the host or idea in which they reside. In the "Potato Tower," the square tower structure constructed with glass and potatoes inevitably deforms and collapses over time. Similarly, in "Potato in a Cairn" or "Potato in a Wine Glass," the uncertainty hidden in nature or daily life is revealed. "Thingking on an Organic Foundation," borrowing from Rodin's "The Thinker," metaphorically reminds us that it seems necessary to create a more dynamic and organic thought foundation today to adapt to a more uncertain future.