Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei

Chuang Wei-Tzu, the current curator of C-LAB and former Editor in Chief of Artist Magazine, is deeply interested in exploring the diversity of contemporary art in Taiwan. Her research has focused on the evolution of artistic ideas and technology as they are showcased in exhibitions and performances, as well as gender issues in the context of art history. Notable among her recent curatorial projects are the C-LAB annual exhibition Re: Play (2020), Project: The Folly (2021, nominated for the 20^th Taishin Arts Award), (De)phallocentrism (2022), and The Unrestricted Society (2022).

Huang Yi-Chia (b. 1998, Taipei) holds a BFA from National Taiwan University of Arts, and is now studying for her MFA in New Media Art at Taipei National University of the Arts. Her work revolves around performance and video installation, through which she investigates the relations between herself and the audience’s body. In a flamboyant, humorous manner, her work responds to contemporary images in popular culture.

Wu Puwei (b. 1999, Keelung) holds a BFA from National Taiwan University of Arts, and is now studying for his MFA at Taipei National University of the Arts. Engaging in creating site-specific works with painting media, Wu’s practice moves beyond the framework of painting to produce unexpected encounter between the audience and his works, as he responds to the interrelations between the works and the exhibition space through the intervention of images.

Fu Ning (b.1995, Taoyuan) takes the forms of image-making that forge images into materials in her works. Her focus / paintings mostly involve images that are not produced by herself, but rather come from numerous life archives of others. Those images did not witness a capital History, nor are they noteworthy. They are pictures we’ve once come across. For Fu Ning, this working process reflects the contemporary experience where our living life is constantly imaged, even archived. Once uploaded to social media, these images constitute us on the internet. For what it shapes has become a new reality, everything is real, and the presence of matter no longer affects priority.

Yang Lee (b. 1993, Taipei) graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts de Versailles, Paris, France. In his creative career, “painting” has been his sole medium. He defines himself as a “painter.” Regarding the “artist” label imposed on him by society, Yang states that “it is not wrong to call me an artist because everyone can be an artist, but not necessarily a painter.” Yang does not confine himself to a fixed style. According to the artist himself, “a consistent style only exists in series of works. If a style is matched with an artist’s name, it is the most limiting frame to the artist.” Based on the artist’s works, one can detect his attitude towards painting, style, and art. Perhaps, the preconceived gestalt painter has not yet appeared; or he himself is moving towards this very goal, while trying to bring forth a society in which painting is highly autonomous.

Yang Jie-Huai (b. 1992, Taichung) holds an MFA in New Media Art from Taipei National University of the Arts. His practice mainly engages in creating works hybridizing video, photography, concept, and installation, through which he investigates technology as media, its visuality, and expanded image with regard to how they carry out production and operate in the spiritual life of humanity, even to the point of constituting a spiritual framework. His work is posited in the elusive interstices between human emotions and the coded world, and constructs an absurd yet romantic scenario.

Lu Po-Shun (b. 1992, Yunlin) holds a BA in Graphic Communication from National Taiwan University of Arts (NTUA), with a double major in film. He is now a graduate student at the Graduate School of Contemporary Visual Culture and Practice, NTUA, where he endeavors in the creation of video. His work is primarily based on his personal experiences, through which he teases out the developmental trajectory of his life through video, and expands his practice to include different communities, even the life condition of the collective.

Juan Poyuan, an artist, gamer and Internet addict, takes digital archaeology as the core concept of his creative process, and has been focusing on digital games and online spaces for a long time. Juan’s creation source combining online games, online communities, Machinima, game engines, 3D software, history, memory, aesthetics and technical characteristics to create a new, contemporary visual experience, technical thinking, sculpture, video and other ways of viewing, presenting new perspectives and ways of thinking to reflect on and question the meta-set-up behind this post-Internet era.

Hung Tzu-Ni’s work explores the reciprocal relationship formed between light and sound. She mainly works with sound and installation. As each element of her works is respectively constructed and embodied in a given space, she explores the boundaries of what audio and visual work can be in site-specific installations, as well as how such work can interact with its environment. Her practice in installation art primarily concerns how visual or spatial components of a work can reflect, resonate, and be made responsive to and interactive with aural elements, through which she explores the interrelation among sound, material, light, and space.

In his art practice, Hung Sheng-Hsiung (b. 1988, Kaohsiung) works with diverse media, including installation, multimedia, and sculpture to deal with the mediating relations among material, space and the body. He has focused on the plastic realities involved in the subject of sculpture, and has utilized multidimensional language of media to expand the scope of sculpture and propose new ideas, trying to shape a new direction of sculpture and formulate a plastic aesthetics. Hung’s creative approaches include sculpting piles of soil, collaging found objects, and creating damages by carving, through which he unearths and reveals spatial-temporal traces made by the changes of a place, turning these traces into his aesthetic conception through his art practice.

2ENTER is formed by a group of new media artists, namely, Chuang En-Chi, Chen Cheng-Wei, Chiu Jie-Yi, and Liu Ji-Jung. The artist collective works with various media, including video installation, animation, internet information, and game engine, with which they produce works of visual art. Recently, their practice has focused on collecting large numbers of online data, which are translated into contemporary signs and reassembled in game engine, constructing a virtual online ecosystem in their work.

Simple Noodle Art is an art collective founded by Chen Zi-Yin and Chuang Hsiang-Feng in 2019. They utilize diverse media, including installation, video, net art, photography, and AI, to create their work. Coming from the background of art and information respectively, they are both interested in the interaction between technological products and people, as well as how such interaction changes and impacts lifestyles. Through interdisciplinary thinking, they aim to create works that are like a simple bowl of noodles, which has simple ingredients but an amazing taste.

Lin Cheng-Yu (b. 1996, Chiayi) is now studying in the MFA Program at the Department of Fine Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts. His practice focuses on the push and pull between the body and video media occurred when contemporary people watch videos. His works are constituted of installations that interact with the audience, along with collages of different video works (including films, computer software, applications on smartphones, and other interfaces), through which he explores the relationship between the media body and the physical body that influence each other in the works, and extends such relationship into a different kind of perceptual experience.

Annie Lee (b. 1993, Kaohsiung) used to run the Bansu House, a creative space opened for different possibilities. She graduated from the Department of Material Arts and Design at the Tainan National University of the Arts and is currently enrolled in the Graduate Institute of Transdisciplinary Art at the National Kaohsiung Normal University. Lee likes to explore what sits at the heart of her creative desire and then searches for a corresponding medium to work with. Earth, clay, the body, and fibers are some of the materials that she often works with. Since 2015, she has been using art to respond to important events and places she associates with. Each of her artworks does not begin with a specific material, but she tries to find the corresponding media through various reflections and seeks to focus on the materials’ notable characteristics and to appropriate and translate them.

Founded in 2020, ExiStone Workgang is formed by residents of Magang fishing port currently facing relocation as well as arts and cultural workers from different fields. Its core members include Lin Kuei-Miao, Ho Mu-Yun, and Chen Yan-Liang, whose cultural practice focuses on connecting sites of events with the masses as a way to engender the public through a collaborative method that emphasizes on organic assembly and urban-rural connection.

Li Cheng-Liang (b. 1986, Keelung) graduated from the Taipei National University of the Arts in 2013, where he pursued a degree in the Department of Media Art MFA program. Early in his career, Li and his friends founded “Fuxinghen Studio,” where they embraced a non-conventional approach to spark new possibilities for artistic creation. Since 2013, he has been based in Tainan, where he has explored a wide range of creative media. By incorporating handicraft into his visual art, Li has developed a unique aesthetic that blends art and craft seamlessly. His primary research areas include three-dimensional modeling and spatial environments, and he draws inspiration from everyday life to provide insightful commentary on living conditions.

Tsai Pou-Ching (b. 1986, Chiayi) specializes in video and installation art. In recent years, his work has focused on exploring biology-related studies and translating his discoveries into art using techniques like misuse and fabrication. Through his art, Tsai seeks to investigate the complex relationships between humans and animals, reimagining biological research through an amateur lens, which diverges from traditional scientific methods. By doing so, he offers a fresh perspective on the human-animal relationship.

Aerotropolis Stories Live In Dayuan was co-initiated by Wang Cheng-Hsiang and Lin Yan-Xiang in 2022.

Wang Cheng-Hsiang started the Chungli Deepee Meet Place in 2021, a cultural action that takes place at the site of Chungli’s urban planning zone. The project seeks to expose the fading cultural landscapes caused by the zone expropriation for the development of the Chungli Sports Park and the invaluable emotions, history, and culture that are nonchalantly erased along the way, which is commonly the case with the many zone expropriation projects in Taiwan.

Lin Yan-Xiang’s recent projects include the series If mountain has deities, which is based on studies on the Lord of the Land (Tudi Gong) that departs from animism beliefs and practices and concentrates on the areas in New Taipei City and Taoyuan; Copy Island; and Empty Aerotropolis that is based on the zone expropriation taking place in the artist’s hometown, Dayuan.

The two artists continue to persistently follow and write about the dramatic changes happening to the urban planning development site of the Taoyuan Aerotropolis. Incorporating both artistic and cultural features, they conduct tangible actions to explore and question various issues related to Taoyuan, including urban development, local culture, and human-land relationship, responding to the peculiar anomalies observed at development construction sites, with the objective of using their art action, documentation, and practice to bring their long-term observations into the public eye.

Liao Chao-Hao (b. 1990, Taichung) uses pulp to simulate artificial landscape found in Taiwan, ranging from pieces of tetrapod commonly found along seacoasts, retaining walls erected along a mountain road, a vegetation slope for conserving soil and water, or Jersey barriers on the roadside. Through simulating soil, rock and concrete using pulp, Liao aims to move outdoor “landscape” indoors, and attempts to create solid, protective structures with the soft, hand-made material. These ordinary objects made of cement have become a shield against nature’s forces. Yet, the mottled traces of paper and the internal wooden stands visible from the outside also hint at their fragility to nature’s power, which conveys the artist’s reflection on artificial development in relation to the issues of natural environment.