The discourse surrounding independent art spaces centres on three fundamental questions: Why "independent"? What types of "art"? And how is "space" created?
From 2022 to 2025, Asia Art Archive undertook Independent Art Spaces of Taiwan to document and preserve the legacy of independent art spaces that have emerged across Taiwan since the late 1980s. The result was a compilation of over five thousand archival entries, weaving a rich tapestry of exhibition documentation, artworks, critical discourse, and ephemera. These materials illuminate the distinct mission of independent spaces: to establish alternative platforms for exhibition display that operate beyond the conventional paradigms of museums and commercial galleries.
These spaces transcend their physicality as mere venues for display. They function as vital nodes of intellectual and creative exchange, fostering dynamic interactions among artists, curators, and audiences. The very act of maintaining an exhibition space carries implicit power—it represents an assertion of agency in redefining markers of value outside established institutional frameworks. Indeed, these spaces have proven instrumental in reshaping art historical narratives by challenging traditional modes of presentation, cultivating artistic innovation, and reflecting broader shifts within the cultural ecosystem. By examining the complex web of relations these spaces engender, we gain insight not only into what “independence” means in an art context, but also into the spaces’ profound influence on art discourse and sociocultural transformation.
As an institution committed to advancing art historical scholarship through archival practice, Asia Art Archive approaches this international symposium with several critical enquiries: How might these systematically collected archives generate fresh perspectives on the evolution of independent art spaces across Asia? What methodologies can we employ to effectively analyse and interpret these materials? And through examining the diverse narratives of art spaces across different regions, can we construct a more nuanced understanding of Asia’s artistic landscape?
Date：April 11-April 13, 2025
Venue：Art Space I, Gray Box, Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB)
Organizer：Minstry of Culture(MOC)、Asia Art Archive (AAA)、Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB)
※Chinese/English Simultaneous Interpretation Provided.
📌 REGISTRATION
📅 April 11, 2025 (Friday)
Keynote Session | 19:00–20:30
📅 April 12, 2025 (Saturday)
Morning Session | 09:30–12:20｜Symposium Introduction, Session I
Afternoon Session 13:00—16:10｜Artist Intervention, Session II
📅 April 13, 2025 (Sunday)
Morning Session 09:30—11:40｜Session III
Afternoon Session 12:30—18:30｜Session IV, Artist Intervention, Roundtable Discussion, Closing Remarks
📢 Online registration required. Free Admission. 👉🏻Registration NOW
PANEL INFO
▌KEYNOTE SPEECH
Navigating the Zomia Cultural Landscape and Beyond: Independence, Collaboration, and Institutional Engagement
Gridthiya GAWEEWONG (Artistic Director, Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok)
In this keynote, Gaweewong will reflect on her curatorial journey, from co-founding Project 304, an independent collective that partially reshaped the local contemporary art scene in the mid-1990s, to my current role as the Artistic Director and Curator of the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok. This talk explores the evolution of contemporary art curatorial practices across Southeast Asia, tracing connections from the Mekong River to the archipelago, and examines the collaborative efforts that emerged from local, regional, and international partnerships...
▌SYMPOSIUM INTRODUCTION
Nicole WANG (Project Researcher, Asia Art Archive)
"Archives" rest upon a premise so fundamental that we often overlook its inherent challenge: one must first possess the tangible historical materials before they can be transformed into accessible archives. Throughout the three-year span of Independent Art Spaces of Taiwan, our most significant challenge extended beyond merely identifying which art spaces to incorporate into our collection or determining what research perspectives these archives might illuminate. The crucial question was whether these spaces—serving as historical nodes—possessed sufficient documentation to articulate their own narratives and challenge potential omissions or established historical accounts. Confronting these obstacles, we endeavoured to reconstruct artistic practices that once flourished on the institutional periphery using limited remnants, and through this methodical process, mapped independent art spaces across Asia.
▌SESSION I ｜ INDEPENDENCE AS AN INSTITUTIONAL INTERSTICE
The "independent" in independent art spaces constitutes a complex and multi-layered discourse that defies simple categorisation. To view it merely as a binary opposition to institutional structures would fail to capture its inherent complexity and evolutionary trajectory. Here, "institution" extends beyond a singular concept to encompass multiple intersecting power structures—including the museum circuit, art market mechanisms, government cultural policies, art school education, and the conditions shaped by civil society. These power structures alternate between moments of convergence and contestation, collectively shaping the field of artistic production, display, and circulation. This panel examines how independent art spaces negotiate their position within specific sociopolitical contexts and institutional frameworks, developing distinct modes of practice in response. These practices not only reflect the cultural ecology of their specific temporal and spatial contexts but also reveal the multiplicity of possibilities that emerge as independent spaces navigate institutional change. Within these dynamic relationships—encompassing both opposition and cooperation, conflict and compromise—what forms do independent art spaces in Asia assume? And how do these relationships help us delineate the landscape of contemporary art history in Asia?
Moderator: Sneha RAGAVAN (Senior Researcher and Head of Asia Art Archive in India)
Democratic Practice in Taiwan’s Independent Art Spaces
Pei-Yi LU (Director of CCSCA, National Taipei University of Education)
Work in Progress: The Shifting Art Institutional Landscape in India
Vidya SHIVADAS (Curator and Director, Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art)
Deictic Understanding of Asian Independent Art Spaces: Alternative Spaces and New Spaces in South Korea
Sohyun AHN (Independent curator)
▌ARTIST INTERVENTION
Huge Likeness, On Publishing Archives Lecture Performance
Ala Younis
▌SESSION II ｜ Independence as a Strategy of Resistance and Aesthetic Experimentation
The way independent art spaces are situated occupies an inherently ambiguous territory—maintaining critical distance from mainstream institutions while navigating fiscal sustainability. This fundamental tension manifests not only in operational considerations but permeates artistic methodology and aesthetic orientation. For independent art spaces, artistic practice inherently encompasses critical engagement with institutional frameworks. This panel investigates how independent art spaces in Asia engage with and reconceptualise their relationships with institutions through diverse artistic practices. These include experimental approaches to exhibition making, innovative media exploration, and spatial reconceptualisation. Within this context, the production of archives and documentation transcends mere record-keeping—it actively participates in constructing the discourse of independent spaces, offering alternative approaches to writing and constructing art historical narratives.
Moderator: Anthony YUNG (Senior Researcher, Asia Art Archive)
The Coordinates for Actors: The Actions of Film Recording Implemented by ET@T and HUANG Ming-Chuan in the Mid-1990s
Hsing-Jou YEH (Independent researcher, art critic, and producer)
Salon Natasha and the Meaning of Independence in the Late Twentieth Century Hanoi Art World
Nora TAYLOR (Alsdorf Professor of South and Southeast Asian Art, School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
A Garden Enclosed: An Examination of The Substation Arts Centre in Singapore
Andy KOH (Manager, National Gallery Singapore Library & Archive)
Bruce QUEK (Assistant Manager, National Gallery Singapore Library & Archive)
▌SESSION III ｜ The Dialectics of Collectivity: Community Formation and Field Reconstruction in Independent Art Spaces
While discourse surrounding independent art spaces often centres on their physical space or exhibition programmes, these spaces fundamentally function as sites of congregation—where artists and participants convene, engage in dialogue, establish networks, and cultivate multifaceted community and artistic relations. This collectivity extends beyond physical boundaries, evolving into shared alternative practices that transcend geographical and institutional limitations, thereby reshaping the artistic landscape.
In the context of Asia, gatherings held at independent art spaces are often sites of powerful resistance and creativity through their peripheral positioning. From artist-run initiatives of the early 1990s to transdisciplinary experimental venues of the post-millennial era, independent art spaces continuously redefine both the notion of the “contemporary” and the possibilities of artistic practice through sustained collective engagement. These spaces demonstrate how collectivity can be transformed into a structural force, reshaping existing spaces and relations within an artistic ecology. Through diverse case studies, this panel examines how collective action in independent art spaces transforms contemporary art ecosystems in Asia.
Moderator: Nicole WANG (Project Researcher, Asia Art Archive)
Up Art Gallery 1990–1995: The Field Practice of a Cooperative Gallery and Independent Art Space
Pin-Hua WANG (Associate Professor, Department of Fine Arts, National Changhua University of Education)
Tracing the Contemporary Through Artist-Run Spaces in the Philippines
Ringo BUNOAN (Independent artist, curator, and archivist)
Weaving, Extending, and Commoning: The Archive of "Art as Environment—A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek" and Community Generation at Bamboo Curtain Studio
Fiona Yu-Lun HSU (Researcher and Curator, Taichung Art Museum)
▌SESSION IV ｜ Reinterrogating Experimentality: Contemporary Pathways of Practice in Independent Art Spaces
Within independent art spaces, experimentalism represents more than just formal innovation—it embodies the impulse to transcend and reconstruct existing systems and modes of cultural production. This experimental ethos, rooted in the pursuit of alternatives, manifests across multiple dimensions—from exhibition methodologies to organisational structures, from knowledge production to community networks. As an experimental ethos becomes increasingly folded into mainstream contemporary art discourse, we must reconsider how this once-revolutionary principle can generate new pathways.
This panel addresses how the "experimental" can be transformed into more refined cultural strategies, exploring potential innovations within existing structures through multiple lenses: knowledge production, cultural practice, and institutional critique. The experimental spirit of today potentially indicates a more nuanced mode of practice—one that simultaneously explores alternative knowledge production while developing resilient cultural networks through collective action.
Moderator: Özge ERSOY (Senior Curator, Asia Art Archive)
Mattola Palallo: Collective Experimentalism and the Ethics of Mutual Support
Mirwan ANDAN (Member of ruangrupa; Founder and Director, PALIMAJI)
Change Is Hard—Experiments with Art Institutions and Transinstitutionality
Charles ESCHE (Independent writer and curator)
Xeno-epistemic Space–The Duality of Independent Spaces: Reconstructing Relationships, Listening for Echoes
Amy CHENG (Senior Curator, Singapore Art Museum)
▌ARTIST INTERVENTION
Acid House Molting after Forming a Cocoon Performance
Siao-Chi CHEN
▌ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION ｜ Autonomous Archives—Methods, Perspectives, and Visions
While archives have traditionally operated within institutional frameworks, recent years have witnessed the emergence of independent actors and micro-organisations autonomously organising, interpreting, and activating archival materials, thereby asserting agency in historical documentation. Operating with limited resources, these practitioners intervene in traditional power structures of historical narrative, demonstrating the potency of micro-initiatives. Their work provides crucial insights for institutional archives: How might archival practices better reflect local contexts? How can collaboration with independent actors expand archives’ social significance while preserving its individual agency?
This roundtable convenes practitioners from diverse fields—image research, art history, independent art spaces, and artistic practice—to share their perspectives on archival work. How can personal memories and organisational histories preserve their distinctive character amidst the process of archiving? How might these deeply personal archives, when integrated into professional institutions, generate new dialogue through institutional networks? Drawing from varied archival practices, we consider how archival work might simultaneously preserve historical records and serve as a critical resource to catalyse contemporary artistic practice.
Moderator: Anthony YUNG (Senior Researcher, Asia Art Archive)
Discussants:
Shih-Lun CHANG (Independent art critic and visual culture researcher)
Heidi CHEN (Managing Director, Bamboo Culture International)
Yi-Che CHEN (Independent researcher and artist)
Chia-Hsuan YANG (Independent researcher and curator)
Jun-Honn KAO (Assistant Professor, Graduate Institute of Transdisciplinary Art, National Kaohsiung Normal University)
▌CLOSING REMARKS
Mali WU (Professor, Graduate Institute of Transdisciplinary Art, National Kaohsiung Normal University)
SPEAKER & ARTIST INFO
▶ Gridthiya GAWEEWONG
Gridthiya Gaweewong is Artistic Director and Curator of the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok. Her curated projects across Asia, Europe, and the Americas include Imagined Borders, 12th Gwangju Biennale (2018); Between Utopia and Dystopia, Mexico City (2011); Unreal Asia, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen (2009); and Under Construction, Tokyo (2000–02). Gaweewong was a guest curator of the exhibition Apichatpong Weerasethakul: The Serenity in Madness that toured six cities (2016–20), initiated by Independent Curators International (ICI). A 2018 Fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership, MoMA, New York, Gaweewong has also been a member of the acquisition committee for the Singapore Art Museum since 2020. She was awarded the French Ministry of Culture’s Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2023, and the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence from Bard College in 2025. Gaweewong currently serves as a member of the Finding Committee for Artistic Director of documenta 16.
▶ Pei-Yi LU
Pei-Yi Lu received her PhD in Humanities and Cultural Studies from the University of London. She is Director and Associate Professor of the Critical and Curatorial Studies of Contemporary Art MA at National Taipei University of Education. Her research interests encompass contemporary curatorial studies, examining the mechanisms of art museums and biennials as well as deliberating art practices beyond existing cognitive frameworks. Lu’s writings are published in domestic and international conferences, academic journals, and books. Her essays are featured in Art and the City: Worlding the Discussion through a Critical Artspace and The Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm, among others. Her books include Contemporary Art Curating in Taiwan 1992–2012 and Art/Movement as a Public Platform: A Study of Contemporary Art and Social Movements.
▶ Vidya SHIVADAS
Vidya Shivadas is a curator based in New Delhi. She is the Director of the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art, a non-profit arts organisation that works in the field of art education and aims to broaden the audience for contemporary Indian art, enhance opportunities for artists, and establish a continuous dialogue between the arts and the public through education and active participation in public art projects. Shivadas has curated a number of exhibitions at the Vadehra Art Gallery since 2005 as well as guest curated exhibitions at Devi Art Foundation, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, and Edinburgh Art Festival. She was the Visual Arts Curator for Serendipity Arts Festival 2023. Shivadas has been Visiting Faculty at School of Culture and Creative Expressions, Ambedkar University Delhi, since 2013.
▶ Sohyun AHN
Sohyun Ahn (b. 1976) is a curator and art critic based in Seoul. She curated That’s What We Did (The Page Gallery, 2024); The Sea Will Not Sink (Ansan/Seoul, 2019); Salt of the Jungle (KF Gallery, ASEAN Culture House, Vietnamese Women’s Museum, 2017); Degenerate Art (Art Space Pool, 2016); and Good Morning Mr. Orwell 2014, Tireless Refrain, x_sound: John Cage, Nam June Paik and After (Nam June Paik Art Center, 2012–15); among others. Ahn was Director of the Art Space Pool (2018–21), Chief Editor of the magazine Forum A, and co-writer of A Conversation on Photography (2019). She received a PhD in Museology from Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, France.
▶ Ala YOUNIS
Ala Younis is an artist with curatorial, film, and publishing projects. She holds a BSc in Architecture from the University of Jordan (1997) and an MRes in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London (2016). She has held solo exhibitions in Amman, Dubai, Sharjah, New York, London, Seville, and Prague. She also participated in group exhibitions including the biennials of Venice, Istanbul, Gwangju, Ljubljana, Kaunas, Ural, and d'Orléans. She curated the Kuwaiti Pavilion at Venice Biennale (2013), the collection and interventions of the Museum of Manufactured Response to Absence (2012–14), and co-curated the Singapore Biennale (2022). In 2012, Younis co-founded Kayfa ta, a publishing initiative researching, exhibiting, and publishing on and through independent publishers. Younis is Artistic Director of Akademie der Kunst der Welt (Cologne), and Research Scholar at al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art at NYU Abu Dhabi.
▶ Hsing-Jou YEH
Hsing-Jou Yeh is an independent art worker (specialising in research, art criticism, and production) and a PhD candidate at the School of Fine Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts. Yeh’s research focuses on art practices of independent production and the DIY spirit of 1990s Taiwan, exploring the interpretive methods of art documentaries as art historical archives. Yeh was formerly director of ET@T Lab Theater, responsible for the planning and operation of the ET@T Archive (est. 2016). https://hjyeh.com/
▶ Nora TAYLOR
Dr Nora Annesley Taylor is the Alsdorf Professor of South and Southeast Asian Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She received her PhD from Cornell University in 1997 and is the author of Painters in Hanoi: An Ethnography of Vietnamese Art, the co-editor of Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Art, An Anthology, as well as numerous articles about Modern and Contemporary Vietnamese and Southeast Asian Art. She is on the Board of Advisors for Asia Art Archive and supervised their digitisation of the Salon Natasha Archive. In 2013, she was the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.
▶ Andy KOH
Andy Koh is Manager at the National Gallery Singapore Library & Archive, where he is part of a team focused on digitising, cataloguing, and facilitating access to archival resources related to Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art. Prior to joining the Gallery, he served as an archival research assistant at the Singapore Art Museum from 2018 to 2020. His research interests include the interrogation of archival absences and the critical examination of the limitations of written records.
▶ Bruce QUEK
Bruce Quek is Assistant Manager at the National Gallery Singapore Library & Archive, as well as an artist and writer. He has shown in group exhibitions at ZKM, Karlsruhe; QAGOMA, Brisbane; and Singapore Art Museum, among others. Prior to joining National Gallery Singapore in 2024, he assisted the late performance artist Lee Wen in the Independent Archive’s programming and organisation. In collaboration with Asia Art Archive, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, and National Gallery Singapore, he also contributed to the development of the Lee Wen Archive, and subsequently The Substation Archive.
▶ Pin-Hua WANG
Pin-Hua (Man-Ping) Wang is Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at the National Changhua University of Education. She earned her PhD in Art Creation and Theory at Tainan National University of the Arts and has independently curated several exhibitions, including A Sparkling City: 2000 Taipei County Art and Technology Exhibition (Banqiao Station, 2000), When Spaces Became Events... Dispositif of Modernity in the 1980s Taiwan (Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, 2012), and Images Creation: Contemporary Virtual Narratives (2022). She is the principal investigator of the 2023–27 University Social Responsibility: Ecological Art Project at National Changhua University of Education.
▶ Ringo BUNOAN
Ringo Bunoan is an artist, curator, and archivist from the Philippines. A recipient of the Thirteen Artist award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines, she led and co-founded the alternative art space Big Sky Mind (1999–2004); the non-profit organisation King Kong Art Projects Unlimited (2010–22); and artbooks.ph, an independent bookstore specialising in Philippine art and culture (2014–). Bunoan curated several landmark exhibitions in the Philippines, including Chabet: 50 Years, the first retrospective exhibition of Roberto Chabet (2011–12); the inaugural edition of Manila Biennale Open City Exhibition in Intramuros (2018); and The 70s: Objects, Photographs, Documents at Ateneo Art Gallery (2018). From 2007 to 2013, she was Researcher for the Philippines at Asia Art Archive, where she initiated and created the archives of Roberto Chabet and several artist-run spaces in Manila. She received her BFA in Art History from the University of the Philippines and an MA in Archives and Records Management from University College London (UCL). She currently lives in London and recently began her PhD research on artists’ archives at UCL and INIVA through the LAHP Collaborative Doctoral Award.
▶ Fiona Yu-Lun HSU
Fiona Yu-Lun Hsu is a researcher, curator, and writer with a background in literature and contemporary art. Formerly in artist publishing, Hsu later worked in international exchange affairs at institutions such as National Culture and Arts Foundation and the Cultural Taiwan Foundation. From 2019–20, Hsu served as Director for the twenty-fifth anniversary project of Bamboo Curtain Studio, researching and planning social engagement events and practices of collective collaboration. In recent years, she is particularly engaged with Southeast Asian art communities, focusing on the building and connecting of resource systems, actively participating in and initiating cross-institutional collaborative art projects with political and social awareness. Recent projects include Not Just Love Stories, which follows the politics of emotion of Southeast Asian migrant worker communities in Taiwan, and the international platform TAI: Transnational Artistic Intervention co-initiated with Thailand’s Prayoon for Art Foundation. Hsu participated in the Curatorial Intensive training programme organised by Independent Curators International (ICI). She is currently on the exhibition team at Taichung Art Museum, participating in preparations for the museum’s opening.
▶ Siao-Chi CHEN
Siao-Chi Chen (b. 1990) is an artist and performance and exhibition curator. Since 2012, he has been using the idea of “party-theatre” to consider disruptions in current situations as a method of conceptual expression, exploring the perceptual mechanisms behind conflicts. In 2014, he founded experimental space Acid House and is now the convener of the group, focusing on the interplay of relationships between alternative cultures and spaces, and planning numerous projects and research on exhibitions and performances. In recent years, he has been exploring the self-organisation and cultural actions of art communities through writing and self-publishing zines. Chen holds an MA from the Department of Drama at the National Taiwan University of Arts.
▶ Mirwan ANDAN
Mirwan Andan is a member of ruangrupa, a Jakarta-based collective, and the Founder and Director of PALIMAJI, a company for cultural advancement based in Makassar. He was part of the artistic team of documenta fifteen (Kassel, 2022) and is a Research Associate at Artistic Activism Research CoLab – AARC (New York, 2024–present).
After six years at Islamic boarding schools, he studied French literature at Hasanuddin University, Makassar (1999–2004), followed by comparative politics and Southeast Asian studies at Universitas Indonesia. His writings include Imajinasi Kebudayaan (KSI, 2013), 20Kuldesak (Kuldesak Network, 2018), and Perang Suara (Komunitas Bambu, 2023).
As a cultural practitioner, he has spoken at institutions worldwide, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; University of Iceland, Reykjavík; REDCAT, Los Angeles; NIMAR, Rabat; and Asia Art Forum, Seoul. From 2016 to 2018, he served as an advisor to the General Director of Culture at Indonesia’s Ministry of Education and Culture. Since 2014, he has divided his time between Makassar and Jakarta, where he co-founded Riwanua in 2018, an art and cultural project initiative.
▶ Charles ESCHE
Charles Esche is a writer and curator based in Amsterdam. His academic and cultural focus is on the consequences of decolonial theory for Europe and its long histories of global extraction, exclusion, and denial. He is interested in how art and culture in these territories can respond and build a more just dialogue with cultures beyond Western Europe in particular. One methodology he is currently developing is the concept of demodernising as a way for Western Europeans to approach the challenge of decolonial thinking. Esche is a professor of contemporary art and curating at University of the Arts London. Until 2024, he was also Director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. His latest publication is Art and Its Worlds (Afterall and Koenig Press, 2021) and he is co-writing Demodern Thinking with Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti to be published with Duke University Press in 2025.
Esche has (co-)curated the international exhibitions Soils, Van Abbemuseum, 2024; The Meeting That Never Was, MO Museum, Vilnius, 2022; Hurting and Healing, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, 2022; Power and Other Things, Europalia, BOZAR, Brussels, 2017; Art Turns, Word Turns, Museum MACAN, Jakarta, 2017; Neither Forward nor Back, Jakarta Biennale, 2015; How to Talk about Things that Don’t Exist, 31st Sao Paulo Biennale, 2014; Ideal for Living, U3 Triennale, Ljubljana, 2011; Play Van Abbe, 2009–2011, RIWAQ Biennale, Palestine, 2007 and 2009; Istanbul Biennale, 2005; and Gwangju Biennale, 2002.
▶ Amy CHENG
Amy Cheng is a curator and writer. She is currently Senior Curator at the Singapore Art Museum.
As a co-founder of TheCube Project Space in Taipei, she was its artistic director from 2010 to 2024. Based on the praxis of “outreach curating,” Cheng has not only devoted herself to in-depth collaboration with artists, cultural activists, and researchers, but also developed long-term research and curatorial projects.
Her curatorial endeavours primarily focus on Asia’s history and geopolitics as well as its relations to the world. Since 2010, she has collaborated with Jeph Lo (a sound culture researcher and co-founder of TheCube Project Space) on promoting modern sound cultures in Taiwan and Asia, and also on extending TheCube Project Space into a platform for multiple cultural practices such as exhibition, performance, publishing, online databases, and Internet radio.
Cheng has curated the exhibitions Madeleine Moment: The Technology of Memory and Sentiment (Taipei/Taichung, 2023), Liquid Love (Taipei, 2020), Towards Mysterious Realities (Taipei/Seoul, 2016, 2018), Re-envisioning Society (Taipei, 2011–12), and The Heard & the Unheard: Soundscape Taiwan (The 54th Venice Biennale Taiwan Pavilion, 2011).
She co-curated Reimagining Radical Cities (New Taipei City, 2025), The 5th Anniversary of Jut Art Museum: LIVES: Life, Survival, Living (Taipei, 2022), Tell Me a Story: Locality and Narratives (Shanghai/Turin, 2016–17), Altering Nativism: Sound Cultures in Post-War Taiwan (Taipei/Kaohsiung, 2014), Melancholy in Progress: The Third Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition (Taipei, 2012), and Do You Believe in Reality? (Taipei Biennial, 2004). She also programmed two editions of Curators’ Intensive Taipei (CIT19 and CIT24) organised by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
Cheng was invited to serve as a jury member for the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 and the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award for Emerging Asian Artists in 2015.
▶ Shih-Lun CHANG
Shih-Lun Chang is an art critic and a researcher of film history. He was formerly a member of museum staff and a magazine journalist. He curated An Open Ending: Huang Hua-Cheng (Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2020). He is the author of Reclaiming Reality: On the Historical Formation of Taiwanese Photography (2021) and the translator of Understanding a Photograph, Another Way of Telling: A Possible Theory of Photography and The Photograph as Contemporary Art. His research interests encompass film history, art archives, music criticism, film studies, aesthetic modernity, and Cold War history. Currently, he is working on the writing of Taiwanese film history and visual art criticism.
▶ Heidi CHEN
Heidi Chen was born in Yunlin, Taiwan. She is a semi-freelancer in the fields of art administration, civic technology, environmental art, and archiving collections. Chen graduated from the Department of Cultural Heritage Conservation at the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology. Chen is currently Operations Director at Bamboo Culture International and studies at the Graduate Institute of Building and Planning at National Taiwan University. She has inadvertently accumulated experience in art administration for over a decade and has long been wandering alongside the boundaries of art and culture while pondering the relationships between humans and environments and exploring social justice and humanistic values. She has recently dabbled in archival science owing to her experience working at Bamboo Curtain Studio, striving to archive documents about it and improve their public accessibility.
▶ Yi-Che CHEN
Yi-Che Chen (b. 1992, Taiwan) is a survivor of the 1999 Jiji Earthquake. He earned his MFA from the Department of Fine Arts at Taipei National University of the Arts, during which he was principal researcher on the projects “No. 5, Lane 18” and “Tiantai Studio,” roaming across contemporary art spaces and civil society organisations as a community organiser. Chen has long been concerned about the establishment and dissolution of artist-run spaces and has been sorting out post-war artistic development in Taiwan in his seemingly irrelevant historical research. He currently lives and works in Sanchong, New Taipei.
▶ Chia-Hsuan YANG
Chia-Hsuan Yang (b. 1982, Tainan) graduated from the MA programme in Art History and Criticism at the Tainan National University of the Arts. She currently serves as Project Manager at Absolute Space AIR (2024–). She was formerly Executive Editor at ACT and was in charge of operations at Howl Space in Tainan from 2012 to 2018. She participated in the publication of In the Twilight, Starting from the South: Tainan Art Spaces Now & Remembered 1980-2012 (2012), Moving Wind: “Modern Art Style Exhibition of South Taiwan” Archive 1986-1997 (2018), and Exhibition in Becoming: Taipei County Art Exhibition and Experimental Art, 1992-1997 (2022).
▶ Jun-Honn KAO
Jun-Honn Kao is an artist, a researcher, and Assistant Professor at the Graduate Institute of Interdisciplinary Art at National Kaohsiung Normal University. His artistic mediums include project-based art, nonfiction writing, body art, and video art, with focuses on spaces, histories, biopolitics, indigenous groups, and inter-Asian dialogues.
▶ Mali WU
Mali Wu is an artist and Professor Emeritus of the Graduate Institute of Interdisciplinary Art, National Kaohsiung Normal University. She graduated from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In the 1990s, she was Chief Editor of the art book series at Yuan-Liou Publishing Co. Ltd., introducing Western avant-garde art through translations, injecting new perspectives into the Taiwanese art scene. At the same time, she assisted the establishment of contemporary art organisations in Taiwan, including the Association of the Visual Arts in Taiwan and the Taiwan Women’s Art Association, while influencing cultural policies significantly through her research on artist communities.
She devotes herself to the creation of conceptual and performance artworks, skilled at connecting historical, political, and social issues. In 1995, Wu was a participating artist in Taiwan’s first appearance at the Venice Biennale. Since 2000, her art practice has further expanded to include ecological and community care, emphasising the power of art to enact social change. In 2016, Wu was the recipient of the 19th National Award for Arts. Wu co-curated the 11th Taipei Biennial, Post-Nature—A Museum as an Ecosystem, in 2018, and has served as the principal investigator of “Art for Social Change” at the National Tainan Living Art Center since 2020. Her solo exhibition Dàng was held at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in 2023.
MODERATOR INFO
▶ Sneha RAGAVAN
Sneha Ragavan is Senior Researcher and Head of Asia Art Archive in India, a New Delhi–based independent arts organisation dedicated to re-imagining modern and contemporary art historical narratives in the region through the framework of the archive. AAA in India digitises, conducts research on, and curates materials from the archives of artists, events, exhibitions, and spaces from South Asia, with a special focus on writing in multiple languages. AAA in India is an overseas hub of Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong.
Ragavan holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, for her work on the discourse of the national modern in twentieth century architecture in India, and an MVA in Art History and Aesthetics from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. University of Baroda. Her areas of research interest include cultural historiography, feminist practice, and critical archival studies.
▶ Anthony YUNG is Senior Researcher at Asia Art Archive.
▶ Nicole WANG
Nicole Wang currently serves as Project Researcher at Asia Art Archive, where she leads the research and implementation of Independent Art Spaces of Taiwan. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Durham University and an MA in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her scholarly interests examine the formation and dynamics of relationships across various contexts, the emergence and transformation of collective networks, and the fluid connections between memory and historical narratives.
▶ Özge ERSOY
Özge Ersoy is Senior Curator at Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong. Her research interests encompass expanded ideas of archiving, collecting, and exhibition-making in contemporary art. Recent projects include co-curating In Our Own Backyard (2025) and Countering Time (2024) at AAA’s library, as well as Translations, Expansions (2022), AAA’s contribution to documenta fifteen. Her writings on cultural institutions and contemporary art have been featured in Curating Under Pressure: International Perspectives on Negotiating Conflict and Upholding Integrity (Routledge, 2020) and The Constituent Museum: Constellations of Knowledge, Politics and Mediation (Valiz and L’Internationale, 2018), among other publications. She served as Research and Programming Associate for the 13th Gwangju Biennale (2021) and as Assistant Curator for Sarkis: Respiro at the Pavilion of Turkey in the 56th Venice Biennale (2015).
※Free admission; limited spots available on a first-come, first-served basis.
※Reminder notifications will be sent prior to the event. If you do not receive one, please check your spam folder, as C-LAB emails may be filtered as junk mail by Gmail.
※Please set your mobile phone to silent or vibrate mode during the event.
※The organizer reserves the right to adjust or modify event details.