Lai Chih-Sheng was born in 1971 in Taipei and was a member of Nation Oxygen. Since the 1990s, Lai Chih-Sheng has developed a subtle, sensitive practice of artistic intervention responsive to different social and natural environments—by, for example, sullying a carpet that comes with the exhibition space; vertically penetrating a building with drill holes through successive floors; sabotaging the hygienic, orderly entity of an enclosed chamber with a living mosquito; or by reconnecting the campus of a high school and a museum via a game of ping pong. His work, which spans a variety of mediums, delves into subjects such as the dynamics and tension at work in a given space; life experience, and the boundaries of artistic freedom. Always attentive to detail, Lai proposes new relationships between existing elements, dealing directly with the body and perception of the viewer by presenting highly conceptual, poetic exhibitions and projects.
Lai Chih-Sheng has held exhibitions at MoCA TAIPEI, Taipei (2024); Kiang Malingue, Hong Kong (2023); Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei (2020); Kirishima Open Air Museum, Kagoshima (2019); and Observation Society, Guangzhou (2018) among others. He has also participated in group exhibitions at Taipei Biennial, Taipei (2023), A Show about Nothing, By Art Matters, Hangzhou (2021), Aichi Triennale, Aichi (2016); Biennale de Lyon, Lyon (2015); Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale, Shenzhen (2014); and Invisible: Art of the Unseen 1957—2012, Hayward Gallery, London (2012).
Chen I-Hsuen is the winner of the Visual Arts Award at the 18th Taishin Arts Award. He holds an MFA from the Pratt Institute in New York and currently lives and works in Taipei. Chen’s practice, grounded firmly via attention to personal experience, initially explored his own life history through photography before expanding to the living situations of broader groups and communities. From here, his photographic practice has also grown to incorporate other elements such as video, publication, performance, and exhibition, as he has continually experimented with and sought to expand the definition and dimensionality of photography.
Chen’s work has featured at the Taipei Biennial (2016) and been exhibited internationally in cities including New York, Tokyo, Gwangju, Mexico City, and Malaysia. He has held solo exhibitions at venues such as hpgrp GALLERY NEW YORK, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Bamboo Curtain Studio, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Fotoaura Institute of Photography, Hong-gah Museum, and Taipei Artist Village. His work has also been showcased at photography festivals, including the New York Photo Festival, Singapore International Photography Festival, Lianzhou Foto Festival, Jimei x Arles International Photography Festival, and Tainan Photo Festival. His works are part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Kadist Collection.
Founded in 2018, When Pigs Fly was launched as a project aimed at supporting Lin Yu-Hsuan’s (nicknamed “Piggie”) curatorial career to take flight. Later, they combined their shared creative and life experiences from university into an independent publication in 2019, titled What We Talk about, When We Talk about Us. The current team members include Wang Yu-Song, Ho Yen-Yen, Lin Ying-Chieh, Lin Yu-Hsuan, Hsu Ting-Jane, Chen I-Chih, Tang Ya-Wen, Tsai Tsung-Hsun, and Wei Po-Jen.
After graduation, When Pigs Fly has gradually evolved from a collaboration between a group of collaborative young art practitioners to individual members focusing on their own creative projects, curatorial efforts, art education, and design. The only consistent element is the set of scenes that have brought them together over these years: social movements, exhibition installations before openings, members’ homes, and extended online meetings. They have never intended to keep their camaraderie “private,” often highlighting relationships that cannot be reduced to artworks in their projects while documenting and addressing the distance between themselves and art.
Their key works include DA-TOU (182artspace, 2023), Under the Sea (Pingtung Luo Shan Feng Art Festival, 2020), Taipei Dream (Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2018), Guerillas (VT Artsalon, 2018), and Body-Boat (2016).
Liao Chien-Chung was born in 1972 in Taipei, Taiwan. He graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at Taipei University of the Arts and was a member of Nation Oxygen. He is known for creating models that mimic the appearances of various objects, using them as a means to address contemporary life’s predicaments and challenges. Liao has held solo exhibitions at several venues, including Eslite Gallery, IT Park, Double Square Gallery, VT Artsalon in Taipei, Absolute Space of the Art in Tainan, and Yu-Hsiu Museum of Art in Nantou. Additionally, he has also been featured in group exhibitions at numerous art institutions, such as the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, MoCA TAIPEI, New Taipei City Museum, Chimei Museum in Tainan, and Pier-2 Art Center in Kaohsiung. He has conducted artist residencies at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris and the Glenfiddich Distillery in Scotland. His large-scale installations are part of collections at the White Rabbit Contemporary Chinese Art Collection in Australia, Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts, and National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. He currently lives and works in his studio in Duchuantou, Bali District, New Taipei City.
Nation Oxygen was a Taiwanese art collective active in the 1990s, founded in November 1998 by six artists: Lee Ji-Hong, Chiu Hsueh-Meng, Carrie Ou, Yeh Chieh-Hua, Liao Chien-Chung, and Lai Chih-Sheng. Their works primarily focused on site-specific installations, performance art, and video art. Around the year 2000, they frequently created in abandoned buildings and independent spaces near Taipei: such as Nation Oxygen Work Presentation I in 1999 at an abandoned residential house in Bali; Nation Oxygen Work Presentation II at New Paradise; and Arther in 2000 at IT Park. In 2001, they participated in the international exhibition Rice Transformation: An Asian Cross-Cultural Project, creating the live performance Tsau at Huashan Creative Park. In 2002, they presented documentation and video of Tsau at the Co2 Taiwan Avant-Garde Document Exhibition. Their most recent presentation was Micro-Images in Taipei in 2010, where they exhibited the work Gangster.
Hsieh Mu-Chi, born in 1981 in Taipei, Taiwan, graduated from the Graduate School of Fine Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts. In recent years, his work has shifted its focus back to painting, with the aim of connecting more deeply with Taiwan’s environment and cultural context. For Hsieh, painting is not just a medium for creation but also a continuous process of inquiry and exploration, as he searches for the role and representation of painting within contemporary Taiwanese culture. Hsieh is a member of contemporary art collectives such as N.T. Five and Weilai Art Group.
So Yo Hen, an art enthusiast, studied at the Graduate Institute of Arts at Tainan National University of the Arts and is currently a member of Your Bros. Filmmaking Group. Sometimes, he drifts back to the youthful days of founding Wonder Boyz many years ago. His creative work spans various mediums, and he approaches it without preconceived notions about what he’s doing.
From 2017 to 2022, Kueh Peh-Gan and Annie Lee established and ran the “Bansu House,” located in Jianye New Village, Zuoying, Kaohsiung, as part of the first phase of the “Residency as Maintenance Project” (以住代護計畫) initiated by the Kaohsiung City Government’s Bureau of Cultural Affairs. Throughout these five years, Kueh, with an architectural background, managed an alternative space, delved into the visual arts, and founded the Bansu Band. Meanwhile, Lee continued her own creative work and earned the nickname “Mamasan,” a caregiver figure for everyone.
Walking Grass Agriculture is an interdisciplinary artist collective founded in 2014 by Chen Han-Sheng and Liu Hsing-Yu, whose farming backgrounds inform their field research, image-making, and object-based practice.
Chen holds an MFA from Taipei National University of the Arts and has received major honors including the Taipei Art Award (Honorable Mention) and the Tainan New Artist Award (First Prize). Liu earned his MFA from National Kaohsiung Normal University and won the KG＋SELECT Grand Prize at the 2024 Kyoto International Photography Festival. Their works have been shown at the Centre Pompidou, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, and the Kaohsiung Newei Arts Center, and they have participated in the Mattauw Land Art Festival, the Kaohsiung International Steel and Iron Sculpture Festival, and the Matsu International Art Festival. They are currently in residence in Kumamoto, Japan, presenting new work at Tsunagi Art Museum.
Tsui Kuang-Yu has been trying to respond to the adaptive relationship between humans and society from a biological point of view. He also attempts to redefine or question the matrix of the institution we inhabit through different actions and experiments that defy customary norms. His repetitive body experiments accentuate the absurdity of the social values and reality to which people have grown accustomed.
Tsui Kuang-Yu was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1974 and was a member of Post 8 (P8). In 1997 he graduated from National Institute of the Arts and has exhibited internationally since, including Venice Biennale, Liverpool Biennale, Werkleitz Biennial, Reina Sofia Museum, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Contour Biennial, Chelsea Art Museum, Mori Museum, and OK Centrum.
Chiang Chung-Lun was born in Taichung, Taiwan and currently lives in Tainan. He was a member of Wonder Boyz. He graduated from the Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts at Tainan National University of the Arts and is an artist who specializes in using a diverse range of creative formats to express his personal history. Often transforming everyday life into creative sources for his art, he facilitates interactions between the ordinary and his creative endeavors.
In his early years, he graduated from the Painting Program of Fu-Hsin Trade & Arts School and the Spatial Design Program of Shih Chien College of Home Economics. He worked as a prototype sculptor for toys and gift products for 10 years, as an advertising sales representative at Liberty Times for 7 years, and ran Dogpig Art Café as a site for art as resistance for 15 years. His project, Unknown, is currently underway.
Lin Chun-Yung was born in Kaohsiung in 1967 and is a member of Fishsnipers. He approaches art and creation from an ecological and environmental viewpoint and particularly lays emphasis on property justice. With his deep understanding of local culture and community, he situates Taiwan’s ecological concerns within a global context and eventually extends his work to the sustainability of worldwide marine ecology.
Under the pseudonym “Chun-Yung’s Fake Excavation Team,” Lin creates artwork by simulating archaeology excavations, site reconstruction and antique replication. His exhibit Excavation Plan of Architectural Ruins in Sin Siang Lang Seacoast is a forged archaeological site critiquing the exploitation of the coastline in Taiwan and won him the 2014 Austronesian International Arts Award.
In 2015, inspired by the stranding of the sperm whale Da Bao, Lin created the large-scale woodcut installation The Death of Sperm Whale, as well as miniature wave-break installations made from marine debris, including Rouzongjiao Taiwan geographic map, Rouzongjiao in Cigu, and Tomorrow’s Dining Table. These artworks highlight the relationship between humans and nature, aiming to raise awareness of oceanic crises among islanders and to speak up for Taiwan’s natural environment.
Born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan in 1969, Tu Wei-Cheng is a member of Hantoo Art Group. He holds an MFA from the Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts of the Tainan National University of the Arts (2005). He now works as an artist, as well as an Assistant Professor at the Taipei National University of the Arts in Taiwan. He has exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Asian Arts, Nice, France (2022), Oku-Noto Triennale 2020+ in Japan (2020), Rijksmuseum, Netherlands (2019); 1st Thailand Biennale, Krabi, Thailand (2018); V&A Museum, U.K. (2017); Singapore Art Museum (2013); Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2012); Guangzhou Triennial, China (2012); Queens Museum, U.S. (2008); Palazzo delle Arti Napoli, Italy (2007); and Shanghai Biennale, China (2006).
