Elanor Wang

Since 2025, Tatsuo Miyajima has presented two solo exhibitions in Taiwan: Endless Life Cycles at Tao Art and Human Life as Collective Experience at the Asia University Museum of Modern Art. Both exhibitions return to the central concerns of his practice — time, life, death, and human existence.

Miyajima examines these themes by using the LED counter — a device associated with standardised measurement. Yet, he destabilises this uniform system by allowing individuals to determine its rhythm. In his signature work Sea of Time ’98 (1998), 125 residents of Naoshima were invited to set the pace of their own counters. Installed within a 200 year-old house, the numbers pulse in darkness. Each LED counter unfolds at a different speed. What is measured is not the physical world’s time, but lived duration. This idea is also present in his Study of Greenwich Performance (1993), which explores the foundational concept: “Time is not equal; it keeps changing for each individual. ”This recalls Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams, in which time does not obey a single monolithic physical law. In those imagined worlds, time acquires texture. It is viscous, fragile, or smooth, attaching itself differently to each life.

After establishing this programmatic language, Miyajima has continued to work collaboratively worldwide. Local communities and residents participate in shaping the tempo. This approach also extends beyond LED light. His sound work in the exhibition, Counter Voice Network, invites people to count in their mother tongues, following their own cadence, as Miyajima believes each language structures time differently. The audience will fall into a meditative state when they focus on the monotonous voice. A similar experience occurs in his dark installations: scattered digits flicker against black space, drawing attention into a slow, concentrated state. Memories and thoughts emerge.

Miyajima’s work relies on participation, both in creating and seeing. He first invites people to create with him, then invites the audience to input their experience through the changing numbers. What we encounter is not only the LED light, but our own projection. The viewer is not outside the work; the viewer completes it.

This dependence on immersion also reveals a tension. The work requires the viewer to bring their own experience and sensitivity. Without that inward engagement, the numbers remain on the surface. I remember my surprise on first viewing Sea of Time ’98. Since then, it has been difficult to recover that initial intensity. Repeated forms have minimised my response. In later iterations, my perception feels more restrained. The digits continue to count, but their vitality feels diminished.