Intertidal Carapaxia - Wetland’s Future Fossils

Intertidal Carapaxia is a large-scale, site-responsive sculptural installation created for Xianshan. Inspired by the bustling life of the wetland’s creatures, especially the fascinating Taiwanese fiddler crab, its forms emerge as a mysterious hybrid of crab carapaces and the microscopic architectures of diatoms and tiny marine creatures. A white body surfaced by wind and tide, it appears like the skeletal remains of a colony of a long-gone species, returned to the open air by seasonal weather and shifting water.
The sculpture’s skin is made from cut-out recycled synthetic advertising banners, common throughout Taiwan’s agricultural and urban landscapes. These are perforated into crochet-like patterns inspired by fractal geometry. Porous membranes and arches reminiscent of the crab’s jointed legs bring these small structures into a scale visitors can walk among. From a distance, the work reads as a shell-white emergence in the landscape. Up close, its patterned voids suggest the vulnerability of the bodies that inspired it.
Intended as a future fossil, Intertidal Carapaxia asks what remains as everyday human interactions and extraction reshape this environment, already subject to erosion. Metal armatures and reworked synthetic remnants mimic nature in a human attempt to create beauty, yet they can never match the intricacy and function of living forms. The work becomes an invitation to care for the fragile balance that allows these creatures to thrive.

This project has been possible thanks to:
Art Site of the Railway Warehouse, Hsinchu
Weien, Jenny, Omi and Phyu Sin