This series of artist talks begins with art, connecting history, identity, and contemporary conditions, while revisiting experiences that have been overlooked or silenced. Through dialogues between artists and speakers from different fields, it reconsiders how “WE” are formed and excluded, and how “WE” continue to emerge in a rapidly changing world, opening new possibilities for understanding and imagination.
▌Session 1
Art within a Culture Isolation: Tehching HSIEH, 1969 - 1973
Tehching HSIEH, GUO Jau-Lan ( Discussant ), WU Dar-Kuen ( Moderator )
Time: 05/09 Sat. 14:00-16:00
Venue: Multi-function Space
Before the performance art works that earned worldwide recognition, what kind of creative environment did Tehching HSIEH inhabit? What were the historical conditions of painting at the time? What barriers did he feel compelled to push forward against and break through?
The retrospective exhibition, Tehching Hsieh: Lifeworks 1978–1999, currently on view at Dia Beacon—an important site for Minimal art in New York—uses spatial arrangement and the viewers’ bodily experience to fill a gap in American art history concerning performance art’s engagement with time and life under idealism. If so, we need a grounded perspective to explore the story of artistic creation under the specific cultural isolation of the 1970s.
In this lecture, Tehching HSIEH will share with us the Taiwanese art scene of the 1970s—an era we did not have the chance to witness firsthand.
▌Session 2
When I Use "WE", Please Think of It as an Invitation
Chihhung LIU, HSU Jung, GUO Jau-Lan ( Moderator ), WU Dar-Kuen ( Moderator )
Time: 05/09 Sat. 16:30-18:30
Venue: Multi-function Space
This panel discussion takes the term “WE” as its point of departure, inviting Chihhung LIU and Berlin-based artist HSU Jung to share how their artistic practices respond to the construction of “WE.”
Through the role of canaries in mining history and contemporary bird exhibitions, HSU reflects on the entanglement of dependence, control, and emotional projection within interspecies relationships, revealing how cross-species life is translated through processes of classification and display. Meanwhile, Chihhung LIU treats the exhibition space as both infrastructure and interface, using the arrangement of light and circulation to produce a perceptible sense of history. He guides viewers into an interstitial passage between past and present, demonstrating that exhibition production itself constitutes a method of writing art history.
▶ Free Admission via Online Registration
Speaker Bio
Session 1
▌Tehching HSIEH
Tehching HSIEH (b.1950) was born in Nanzhou, Pingtung, Taiwan, and lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is internationally recognized as one of the most important performance artists. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, HSIEH gained prominence for works that radically expanded the physical and temporal limits of art. Trained initially as a painter, he turned to performance after creating Jump in 1973. Between 1978 and 1986 he completed his renowned five pieces of One Year Performances, followed by the Thirteen Year Plan (1986–1999), which features his ongoing creation in the thirteen years without public exhibition. His works have been exhibited internationally, including at the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, Tate Modern, and the Neue Nationalgalerie, and at the Taiwan Pavilion of the 2017 Venice Biennale. His works have also been held in the collections of several international institutions such as the Dia Art Foundation.
▌GUO Jau-Lan
Curator, 2026 C-LAB Annual Exhibition, WE Are Becoming
Associate Professor of Taipei National University of the Arts. GUO teaches contemporary art, art history and curatorial practice. Her research interests revolve around the issue of artistic migration, circulation, art historiography and contemporary art within the culture of display. Her recent curatorial projects have been focused on practicing perceptible art historiography, that is, art history for the public.
▌WU Dar-Kuen
Curator, 2026 C-LAB Annual Exhibition, WE Are Becoming
Director of the Contemporary Art Platform, Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab
Session 2
▌Chihhung LIU
Chihhung LIU is an artist that works and lives in Taipei and Japan. His works in recent years have continued to focus on capturing contemporary life experiences and narrative perspectives. His mediums include painting, ceramics, installation, land art, animation, publishing, etc. In recent years, he has actively participated in artist-in-residencies and joined exhibitions abroad, throughout Europe, Asia, and Oceania. Through residency opportunities, he has actively practiced connecting with local contexts through various types of art projects. His works have been collected by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, and other institutions from home and abroad. He has also won the Shian Aesthetics Award, the Grand Prize of the Taoyuan Contemporary Art Award, and the Taipei Art Awards.
▌HSU Jung
HSU Jung (b.1993) is a Taiwanese artist based in Berlin. Her practice begins with interdisciplinary research and often culminates in installation work. She graduated in 2026 from the Meisterschüler program in Art and Media at the University of the Arts Berlin. She received the Golden Nica (Interactive+ category) from Prix Ars Electronica in 2022 and the Art and Science winner from Falling Walls in 2023. Her two current projects focus on the materiality of memory devices and on investigating the globalization of the canary bird.
▌GUO Jau-Lan
Curator, 2026 C-LAB Annual Exhibition, WE Are Becoming
Associate Professor of Taipei National University of the Arts. GUO teaches contemporary art, art history and curatorial practice. Her research interests revolve around the issue of artistic migration, circulation, art historiography and contemporary art within the culture of display. Her recent curatorial projects have been focused on practicing perceptible art historiography, that is, art history for the public.
▌WU Dar-Kuen
Curator, 2026 C-LAB Annual Exhibition, WE Are Becoming
Director of the Contemporary Art Platform, Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab
▶ Free Admission via Online Registration.
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▶ The organizer reserves the right to change, adjust, or cancel the event.