shashasha

After finishing school, I have mostly been working in offices, but facd with the opportunity of an unknown environment, I started into a new journey…
The youth of today, just as me in the old days, are reluctant to pick up blue collar work. What would their first impression be when faced with the life of a worker, I wonder.
I have feared losing my place in society, felt my wish to escape heighten. There is a lot of contempt for this kind of work in the world, maybe because of the dirty environment, maybe because of the hard work.
As the project’s supervisor, I was able to take part in the work at the site. Looking into the aged faces of the workers around me, I wondered if this would be my future as well.
Inspired by curiosity as much as hesitation, I have tried to capture these instances, to relate simply what I have seen in front of my eyes, what has worried me.

- from the artist’s statement

Through black and white images strong in contrast, Eden Lai portrays his experiences with manual labor in a Taiwanese shipyard.