After Handing Over the Horses

The lasting effects of authoritarianism on contemporary Taiwanese identity are explored through a psychoanalytic reading of ‘Handing Over Horses’ by Lin Yu-Shan. Painted in 1943, the work depicts a Taiwanese serviceman leading horses for the Japanese army during WWII. After the Republic of China’s takeover in 1945, Lin replaced the Japanese flags with those of the R.O.C. amid the Nationalist military suppression of 1947. While hidden throughout the White Terror (1950s–1980s), the right panel deteriorated. In 1999, following Taiwan’s democratisation, Lin restored the original Japanese flags on the right, leaving the altered left panel unchanged. While the painting’s material transformation mirrors the psychological ruptures inflicted under authoritarianism, it also gestures towards a reformation of Taiwanese identity beyond national symbols. By recreating the painting’s cycles of deterioration and restoration, designer Abby Yang’s cyanotype-based moving image offers a meditation on the impact of psychic alienation — manifested as indifference to state violence — on the construction of identity.