2025 EXPO Chicago Taiwan Video Arts Selection-Interwoven Timelines
The Hong-Gah Museum is proud to partner with the Taipei New York Cultural Center to present exceptional video art from Taiwan at the EXPO CHICAGO 2025. For years, the museum has been at the forefront of the “Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition,” showcasing the work of hundreds of artists. Its solo and thematic group exhibitions have garnered numerous awards and widespread acclaim, establishing the museum as a vital platform for international exchange among video artists. The museum has actively fostered global collaboration, working with leading video art organizations such as VideoClub (UK), Vision Mix (Delhi), Proyector (Madrid), VideoArtNetwork (Lagos), and Videotage (Hong Kong), etc. Through exhibitions, screenings, and forums, these partnerships have created dynamic spaces for artistic dialogue while affirming the powerful role of video art in the museum context.
The works featured in the upcoming EXPO CHICAGO 2025, titled “Interwoven Timelines,” aim to reconsider the value of viewing differences and mutual respect amidst the ongoing wars and conflicts of today. As technology advances and cultural exchanges grow, our understanding of the world has evolved significantly. While modernization and the internet have made certain parts of the world more homogeneous, beneath this surface lie fundamental cultural differences and varying perceptions of time. The featured artists explore humanity’s understanding of the world through investigations of ancient civilizations, tribal legends, and Enlightenment texts, examining the issues within contemporary systems of knowledge.
Artists and Video Arts Selection |
CHEN Liang-Hsuan
Chen Liang-Hsuan lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan. Chen’s work explores space-time travel, weaving together different temporal fragments. Through video, she layers images, narratives, and sound into spatial installations. By blending experimental documentary with home video, she constructs hyper-real states that merge everyday life with personal and distinctly Taiwanese memories.Chen earned her MFA in 2016 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Film, Video, New Media, and Animation Department. Her exhibitions include a 2024 solo show at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, solo exhibitions at Taipei Artist Village and Haiton Art Center (2019, 2020), and group exhibitions such as Dumbo Open Studio and Between Earth and the Sky at Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2020).She received an Honorable Mention at the Taipei Art Awards (2017) and the S-An Art Award (2011).
Breathing
Single Channel Colored Stereo Video, approx. 17mins, 2025
“Breathing” is the final chapter of artist Chen Liang-Hsuan’s Taipei Time Trilogy. The first work in the series, Daily (2012), is a dual-channel synchronized video, followed by Hour Hour (2016), a ten-channel synchronized video.Using real-time shooting and a documentary-style approach, Chen captures urban landscapes in Daily and domestic life in Hour Hour. Continuing this method, Breathing shifts the focus to human activity, measuring time through the rhythm of breath.In this work, the artist visits various spaces dedicated to different hobbies and interests, using intimate close-ups to capture people’s faces. In the subtle moments between each inhale and exhale, individuals briefly break away from the structured time imposed by society. Through this, Chen raises a question: Within the framework of society, is there a space where we can truly free our minds and realize our authentic selves?
CHEN Yin-Ju
Artist Yin-Ju Chen lives and works in Taipei, she interprets social power and history through cosmological systems. Utilizing astrology, sacred geometries, and alchemical symbols, she considers human behavior, nationalism, imperialism, state violence, totalitarianism, utopian formations, and collective thinking. Recently, she has been exploring the material effects of spiritual, shamanic, and Buddhism practices and the metaphysical potentialities of consciousness.She has participated in many international exhibitions and film festivals, such as Shanghai Biennial (CN, 2023, 2014), Taipei Biennial (TW, 2023, 2020, 2012. *2020 edition touring to Centre Pompiduo-Metz in 2021), ‘Exterior: The Science of Collective Consciousness’ at Tate Modern Starr Cinema (UK, 2023), Gwangju Biennale (KR 2021), the 5th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art (RU, 2019), International Film Festival Rotterdam (NL, 2018, 2011), Transmediale (DE, 2018), Liverpool Biennial (UK, 2016), Forum Expanded at 66th Berlinale (DE, 2016), Biennial of Sydney (AU, 2016).From 2010-2011, she was one of the artist-in-residence at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (NL). In 2016 she was invited to the residency program at KADIST San Francisco to work on her first solo exhibition in the US.
Somewhere Beyond Right and Wrong, There is a Garden. I Will Meet You There
Single Channel Colored Stereo Video, 16 min, 2023
Taking for inspiration a line by the thirteenth-century Persian poet Rumi, “Somewhere Beyond Right and Wrong, there is a Garden. I Will Meet You There” (2023) is the account of a healing process and a meditation on human suffering. Combining found footage, documentation from the artist’s own travels, and animations of the mythological centaur Chiron (renowned as a healer and prophet), Somewhere Beyond Right and Wrong… asks how spiritual practice can help us to move beyond individual subjectivity to perceive life and death from a cosmic perspective.（Text by Ben Eastham）
Chia-Wei HSU
Chia-Wei Hsu’s work as an artist, filmmaker, and curator merges the language of film and contemporary art and unearths the complex mechanisms behind the production of images. Through his artistic practice, Hsu weaves connections between humans, materials, and places that have been overlooked or omitted in conventional historical narratives. Hsu has had solo exhibitions such as Silicon Serenade at Liang Gallery (2024; Taipei, Taiwan), Tung Chung Art Award: Giant Panda, Deer, Malayan Tapir and East India Company at Museum of NTUE (2019; Taiwan), Black and White – Malayan Tapir at ISCP (2018; New York, the United States), MAM Screen 009: Hsu Chia-Wei at Mori Art Museum (2018; Tokyo, Japan). Industrial Research Institute of Taiwan Governor-General’s Office at Liang Gallery (2017; Taipei, Taiwan), Huai Mo Village at Hong-Gah Museum (2016; Taipei, Taiwan) that was recognised by the Annual Grand Prize of the 15th Taishin Arts Award and Position 2 at Van Abbemuseum, (2015; Eindhoven, Netherlands). He was the finalist in the HUGO BOSS ASIA ART Award in 2013, and won the Annual Grand Prize at the 15th Taishin Arts Award in 2017. In 2024, he won the 10th Eye Art & Film Prize.
Samurai and Deer
Single Channel Colored Stereo Video, 8min50s, 2019
Samurai and Deer traces the 17th-century deerskin trade, a link between cultures across time. Since European currency was unpopular in Asia, the Dutch East India Company bartered Indonesian spices for Taiwanese deerskins, selling them in Japan for silver to sustain further trade. Deerskin was essential in Edo-period Japan for samurai armor and accessories, but overhunting in Taiwan led to shortages. The Dutch sought new sources in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, but their attempts to dominate the market triggered naval battles (1643–1644) with the Cambodian king, who ultimately expelled them. Filmed in Cambodia and Japan, the video weaves oral histories, aerial views of the Mekong battlefield, modern cargo ships, samurai armor workshops, and underwater archaeology. Four interwoven video sequences bridge past and present.
LIU Yu & WU Sih-Chin
Liu Yu and Wu Sih-Chin have been collaborating intermittently on artistic projects since 2019, they excel in utilizing multimedia technologies and diverse materials to transform exhibition spaces into multilayered environments for visual storytelling. Their works, resembling deconstructed films, reconstruct fragmented images, lighting, sound, and sculptural installations into cohesive narratives centered on sensory experience. By emphasizing the presence of the audience and the engagement of their senses, Liu and Wu advocate for an understanding of the world through embodied perception and intuitive awareness. Their past projects have explored themes such as natural history, plant perception, mythology, contemporary apocalyptic prophecies, spirituality, and hypnosis, delving into the intricate connections between humanity and nature, sensory experience, and spirituality. Their works evoke a poetic introspection, guiding viewers into nonlinear narratives and multilayered perceptual experiences that reveal the nuanced interplay between human perception and the world.
Ladies
Single Channel Colored Stereo Video, 18m49s, 2023
Erasmus Darwin’s The Loves of the Plants (18th century) is a collection of nature poems inspired by Carl Linnaeus’ plant taxonomy, which classified plants by sexual traits. Comparing plant organs to human sex organs was controversial, but this approach shaped modern botany despite later DNA research revealing key differences.Darwin embraced Linnaeus’ system and amplified its sexual metaphors, portraying plants with human-like emotions and desires, often highlighting female subjectivity. His poetry also reflected his atheist views, rooting human emotions in physiology rather than theology. The artwork Ladies reinterprets three of Darwin’s poems, exploring how early science shaped perceptions of nature. Instead of debating anthropocentrism, it examines perception itself—how seeing and sensing create knowledge. Yet, expressing this process is an act of translation.Through senses, shapes, and narratives, the artists transform Darwin’s poetic language into immersive visuals, reflecting on how we perceive. Anthropomorphism, while sometimes exploitative, is also a biological instinct that fosters empathy.
WU Chi-Yu
Based in Taipei, WU Chi-Yu is a multimedia artist whose works include film, video installation, and photography. He delves into the lost and unestablished links among species, environment, and the technology that constructs human civilization, exploring the complex historical geography of Asia and the interdependence of various beings through multiple narratives. His works have been exhibited and screened at Times Art Museum, Guangzhou (2021); MoCA, Taipei (2020); 2018 Shanghai Biennale; 2016 Taipei Biennial; Beijing International Short Film Festival (2017) and was a resident artist at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (2014-2015). He is a member of the Taiwanese artist collective Fuxinghen Studio, also the co-founder of the project Pailang Museum, which focuses on the decolonization study of moving images.
Stories of Celluloid: Terra Nullius Data
Single-channel video, 8mm and AI-generated, 12m30s, 2024
The Stories of Celluloid project consists of multiple chapters that explore the past and present of dataset image through early film production material: camphor. Camphor, primarily sourced from the low mountainous regions of southern East Asia and Southeast Asia, was used in early 20th-century celluloid film production. Taiwan, as a major producer of camphor during this period, extracted camphor oil through scientific surveys, modernization, and conflicts with Indigenous communities, projecting the history of the mountains in the circuits of image production. With the use of AI dataset, this chapter brings to life a memory of colonization found in the camphor production techniques preserved in Taiwan and in colonial period literature.
ZHANG XU Zhan
ZHANG XU Zhan lives and works in Taiwan. Born in 1988 into a centurial ancestral paper-crafting family in XinZhuang, the “Hsin Hsin Paper Offering Store” specializes in making paper sculptures for religious rituals or funerals, such as paper effigies, paper animals, paper houses, and other fine crafts. However, ZHANG XU Zhan favors animation. His works are full of bizarre, absurd, grotesque imagery, intended to discuss society and contemporary survival experiences. ZHANG XU Zhan specializes in hand-drawn animation, puppet animation, and digital imagery, combining experimental film and cinema with multi-channel video installations. ZHANG XU Zhang was chosen Deutsche Bank Artists of the Year in 2021, his latest work Compound Eyes of Tropical was awarded Best Animated Short Film in 59th Golden Horse Award.
Compound Eyes of Tropical
Single Channel Color Stereo Video, 17m5s, 2019-2022
The film’s stop-motion animation puppets are made using Taiwan’s unique papermaking technique rooted in traditional funeral ceremonies. At the beginning of the film, a shadow puppet mirror transforms into a shaman-like animal dancer. The film uses the perspective of a fly to create a montage film language using the metaphor of the compound eye. Through the use of choreography in the style of the Taiwanese ‘yi zhen’ folk dance, the film portrays the Southeast Asian folktale ‘The Mousedeer Crossing the River’ through multiple perspectives, reinterpreting the story’s multiple facets across cultures. The audience views the narrative through the vision of the fly’s compound eye, where the folktale represents a form of container, filled with symbolic metaphors such as the mirror and shadows, reflecting the flow of cultural identity, ethnicity and the transitional nature of local and global contexts. The film interprets cultures from around the world, while appearing to be different on the surface, they in fact reveal a similar structure at their core.
Dates | 2025.04.24-27
Venue | Navy Pier, Chicago
Artists | CHEN Liang-Hsuan, Yin-Ju CHEN, HSU Chia-Wei, LIU Yu & WU Sih-Chin, WU Chi-Yu, ZHANG XU Zhan