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Creation/Research Support
The Decolonial Tours Editorial Desk: Mirrored Routes

The Decolonial Tours Editorial Desk was conceived in 2025 by AU Sow Yee, WU Chi-Yu, and Zian CHEN during a field trip to the Malay Peninsula. The itinerary moved through locations defined by colonial legacies and postwar transformations, prompting reconsiderations of the layered dynamics of authoritarian economic restructuring that navigated Cold War-era dependencies as well as inequalities in wealth distribution across different racial groups. For its 2026 residency at C-LAB, The Decolonial Tours Editorial Desk will develop “Mirrored Routes,” tracing resonant lines between Malaysia and Taiwan across Cold War-era economic trajectories, where differing racial formations intersect with economic structures, and where both are refracted through their respective positions as imperial peripheries. We draw on Japanese philosopher Hiroki Azuma’s “philosophy of the tourist,” where tourism converges with publishing to provoke a thought form that reconfigures the distribution of the sensible—addressing the general public while unfolding as a rigorous form of philosophical writing. This project will develop a series of public-facing, multimedia, and interactive “escorts”—from road trips and board games to audio guides—while foregrounding editorial thinking as an intellectual layer structuring publications, with production approached as a process throughout the residency. In doing so, it proposes an alternative public sphere shaped through non-academic registers, designed for circulation, provocation, and contemplation.

CREATORS

From left: WU Chi-Yu, AU Sow Yee and Zian CHEN

AU Sow Yee, WU Chi-Yu and Zian CHEN

The Decolonial Tours Editorial Desk is a collaboration between artists AU Sow Yee and WU Chi-Yu and editor Zian CHEN, initiated during a field trip and presented at Rumah Attap Library & Collective, Kuala Lumpur (2025), with coverage appearing on the Chinese website of Artforum.

AU Sow Yee (born in Kuala Lumpur, based in Taipei) questions and expands the relationships between image-making, history, politics, and power. Her works have been featured at the Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2026), C-LAB Taipei (2025 and 2026), the Taichung Art Museum (2025), the Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok (2025), the Singapore Art Museum (2024), the Sharjah Biennial (2023), and the Busan Biennale (2022), among others. She co-founded Rumah Attap Library & Collective.

WU Chi-Yu (born in New Taipei City, based in Taipei) develops film installations that consider media archaeology in dialogue with geopolitics and ecological histories as configured in Asia. His works have been featured at the Thailand Biennale, Phuket (2025), the Taichung Art Museum (2025), the Taiwan Art Biennial (2018 and 2025), TKG+ Taipei (2023), and MOCA Taipei (2020), among others. Together with Zian CHEN, WU co-founded the Pailang Museum, a platform for settler-colonial critique in Taiwan.

Zian CHEN (born in Taipei, based in Hualien and Shanghai) is a contributing editor at Ocula Magazine. He conducts collaborative artistic research with various artists, with his (co-)curated projects presented at the ICA at NYU Shanghai (2025), Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai (2025), and the Nida Art Colony, Lithuania (2022), among others.