LIE Koo
羅固
Born: About 1894 – Died: 22 January 1942
Particulars:
Koo was born in Fengshan County, Takao, now Kaohsiung in Taiwan. He once had a business in Sumatra but relocated to East Java. He was married to an Indigenous woman and had two boys and two girls. He had a business in Jombang, East Java when the Pacific War broke out. Although he was a Formosan, he was arrested as an ‘enemy alien’, because Formosa, now Taiwan was then under Japanese colonial rule. He died at sea en route to Australia on the SS Cremer, later described as a ‘hell ship’ by surviving passengers. He was given a sea burial the following day.
–Mayu Kanamori
More info:
- Diary of SAITO Toshio, NAA Adelaide AP 613/1, 90/1/101
Masako Kinoshita
Artist/s Statement:
Lie Koo passed away at sea while en route to Australia, leaving behind no official records. However, Toshio Saito, who had been on the same vessel, documented Lie Koo’s final moments in his diary. The Japanese text comes from Saito’s handwritten diary. The two likely developed a close bond, sharing stories about their pasts. The hawk in the centre symbolizes Lie Koo, soaring from his homeland into the wider world. The second hawk represents the people he encountered, including Saito. The large tree represents the family Lie Koo built with his wife and their four children. In the background, a map of Taiwan from the 1940s shows Fengshan, Lie Koo’s birthplace, beneath the hawk’s tail. A person’s life is defined by the connections they make and the imprints they leave behind. Lie Koo’s journey is etched in the bonds he formed and the path he travelled.
Artist Bio:
Masako Kinoshita was born in Aichi Prefecture, Japan in 1973 to a Japanese father and Taiwanese mother. Masako moved to Taiwan after high school to pursue her studies, and graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at the National Taiwan Normal University. She has been based in Taipei ever since, continuing her artistic practice. She is drawn to the texture of oil paint and the traces left by layers built over time, having painted in oils since high school. Through her abstract landscape paintings, she seeks to express her belief that time in life is a gift, and hopes her works serve as mirrors, reflecting each viewer’s own sense of time.