The Oriental Tale -The Emperor, 2022-2023

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This interactive installation is a trailer for The Oriental Tale, a forthcoming puppet show project. The audience could pull the lever at the installation's bottom to lead the shadow puppet to move.

 

The Oriental Tale is based on Belgian-born French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar's short story How Wang-Fo Was Saved from her 1938 collection Oriental Tales.

The story takes place in imaginary mediaeval China. Wang Fo is an artist who loves the image of an object more than the object itself. One day, he and his disciple are abducted to the emperor's palace. The emperor, who has always admired Wang's paintings, believed that everything in the world was as beautiful as it appeared in Wang's works. When he discovered that the world did not like the paintings, he was enraged and decided to blind Wang Fo. Before punishing Wang, the emperor orders him to complete an unfinished painting of the sky and sea from his past.

The sea becomes real and floods inside the palace while Wang is painting. Wang reaches the painting and leaves in a boat on the sea.

 

The Oriental Tale- The Emperor features the leading character of the story- The Emperor. This installation, as the first part of the Puppet show Project, reveals the future presentation of the entire puppet theatre.

 

The Oriental Tale tries to retell the original story. It is a puppet show that integrates sound and video to re-examine the relationship between the real and the simulacra presented in the story and rethink the Orientalism narrative from a contemporary perspective.

 

The full puppet show will be performed in the spring of 2023 in London.