Hunter, Mountain, and Mo-shin-a

This work begins with a haunting question: Why does the hunter, even deep in the mountains, eventually lay down his gun? It is a question that touches not only on the relationship between humans and nature, but also on the fragile boundary between power, belief, and fear. Drawing from the artist’s childhood experiences in Taiwan’s highland villages—where tales of spirits and mysterious beings known as mo-shin-a permeated everyday life—the piece employs AI-generated imagery and digital collage to summon the spectral presence of these forest phantoms.

In this narrative, the mo-shin-a are not literal folkloric beings, but symbolic manifestations of emotional memory, unresolved trauma, and ecological reflection. They emerge as quiet observers in the forest—part myth, part mirror—gazing back at the hunter with neither accusation nor mercy. Through the interplay of algorithmic generation and human composition, these figures dissolve the line between creature and code, memory and simulation.

By reimagining the encounter between hunter and ghost, the artist asks: What happens when the hunted becomes the witness? And what inner transformation begins when we disarm ourselves before the unknowable?