Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei

An independent curator and freelance writer. Chen previously worked as a journalist and editor for art magazines and is currently the Artistic Director of Taipei Digital Art Center, Taipei. Her exhibitions focus in particular on the interrelated dynamics among the displayed artworks; also, with a keen eye for spatial ambience, Chen specializes in constructing exhibition narratives that provide readable and relatable contexts. In recent years, she has participated in numerous curatorial projects, including “A Rhythm of Tree Forming the Forest” (2021, Taiwan)“15th Digital Art Festival Taipei-01_LOVE” (2020, Taiwan), “Letter．Callus．Post-War” (2019, Taiwan; Indonesia), “Expanded Experimental Animation Festival IV” (2019, Taiwan), “Is/In-Land: Mongolian-Taiwanese Contemporary Art Exchange Project” (2018, Taiwan; Mongolia), and “Hybrid and Metamorphosis: YANG Mao-Lin’s Mythology” (2018, Taiwan). By contextualizing the historical and cultural milieu in Taiwan, Chen’s research and curatorial approach aim at mapping out the structure of relevant historical and geological backgrounds so as to depict the atlas of Asian cultural spirit. Since 2016, she started travelling around different cities in Asia and conducting research-based art projects, of which concept is rooted in the shared history between Taiwan and other regions, in close collaboration with artists. For Chen, this process-based approach is central to her curatorial practice.

Wang Ting-Yu (b. 1981, Taipei, Taiwan) considers painting a constantly flowing language. He has consistently transformed contents related to atlases and constellation maps into his creations in the form of easel painting. In terms of selecting images, he uses the internet to search for image results based on other images. He then juxtaposes these results to create collages that reveal an indexical organicity of a certain period-based image search.

Hsu Su-Chen (1966-2013, Kaohsiung, Taiwan) used to work as a medical laboratory scientist. In 2004, she received her MFA. For Hsu, art and medicine are extremely similar. She was also deeply interested in literature, film, as well as natural and social sciences. Therefore, her creative and curatorial endeavor was never confined to fixed forms, and the audience could see how the artist, professionally trained in multiple disciplines, expressed these fields through her art practice. In 2010, Hsu Shu-Chen and Lu Chien-Ming co-curated “Plant-Matter NeoEden: Born in a Vegetable Patch & Material World in the Amis Tribe of Riverbank ”, which won the Visual Arts Award in the 8th Taishin Arts Award.

The art practice of Chen Che-Wei (b. 1986, Yilan, Taiwan) in recent years revolves around the state of abandonment ignored by modern national regimes. He focuses on the subjectivity of metal patients and interrogates their complicated situations in real life. Through personal memory and collective subconsciousness, the artist represents the politics and power relations concealed in systems, their standardizing system of classification, as well as his investigation of life politics and colonial modernity.

Liu Han-Chih’s (b. 1982, Taipei, Taiwan) work aims to portray how people find amusement through understanding their relationship with the external world when actions are lacking or impossible.

The practice of Li Yi-Fan (b. 1989, Taipei, Taiwan) amalgamates sculpture, painting and mapping projection to formulate the concept of meta-narrative. His work seems to be a form of “preparatory work” that lingers on a narrative threshold. In this “preparatory work,” the artist and the media play, fight and torture each other until one of them falls to the ground. His work then stems from the decaying corpse before narratives quietly unfold. Therefore, what one finds in Li’s work is not narrative content, but an ambiguous dimension created by the entanglement between life, media and different stories. In this dimension, time becomes frozen, mercury retrogrades, and uttered words are stuck to one another and rendered useless.

The practice of Hsu Che-Yu (b. 1985, Taipei, Taiwan) mainly engages in animation, video and installation. His work focuses on the interrelation between media and memory. For the artist, when it comes to memory, private or collective memory alike, what is important is not simply events and histories retraceable with media but the processes in which memory could be constructed and viewed.

The art practice of Chen Ching-Yao (b. 1976, Taipei, Taiwan) in recent years mainly engages in the creation of photography and painting, which cover a wide range of topics with an emphasis on deconstructing the symbols of power. His work appropriates popular culture–specifically, Japanese and Korean symbolism, and even portraits of Asian political figures–to conduct extensive processes of rewriting and restating. Such reformulation creates hilarious or comical images or actions. Moreover, he integrates his own image into his work to assume other identities, producing a humorous feeling of intense contrast between his work and the original subject. The artist, by demoting symbols of power, delivers his sarcasm targeted at our society today and hopes that people would be prompted to reflect on the absurdities caused by actions of power in their surrounding as they smile upon viewing his work.