Project Room - Hsia-Fei Chang

Les jeux sont faits. Rien ne va plus.

Hsia-Fei Chang enrolled in a 6-month-long training to become a dealer and work at the Club Berri casinos near Etoile in Paris. For more than two years, she has dealt Black-Jack, Punto Banco, and Ultimate Poker...That is probably where Hsia-Fei Chang gave her longest performance, combining fiction and her daily life. This exhibition features the images she took every day in the form of selfies and other photos published on Instagram. A long freeze stretching over a hundred meters. Time becomes palpable; the artist’s boredom and exhaustion are palpable too. Her images bear witness to the monotony and disillusion that characterizes such nocturnal life and environment. Neon letters in rainbow colors punctuate this series of photographs reading: « Les jeux sont faits. Rien ne va plus. » (That’s it, all bets are off).

Coming from the gambling world, Hsia-Fei Chang constantly says this sentence at her tables. She ended up seeing it as a metaphor for social and gender determinism. Under the neon light is a carpet mimicking the exotic patterns of casino carpeting. Visitors are invited to sit on it and watch a movie entitled « New Life of a Woman! » made of images and short movie clips of Hsia-Fei Chang’s professional, private, and family life. The exclamation point in the title takes on a sarcastic turn and ends up sounding like an advertising slogan from the 50s. Her life unfolds, characters come and go, and the artist keeps asking the question: « where is my husband? » Five nights a week, for two years, Hsia-Fei Chang wore a costume, that of a beautiful young woman devoted to the entertainment of others. Through her own self, Hsia-Fei Chang takes a cold and lucid look at the workplace, fate, and the relationship between the sexes. She observes and explores cultural and gender stereotypes from a bounded yet globalized world, boldly questioning human relationships, and, in particular, the place of women in our society.

With the support of the cultural centre of Taiwan in Paris.