1. Softness Remains: Chiu Chen-Hung Solo Exhibition

Softness Remains: Chiu Chen-Hung Solo Exhibition 2026.03.07 – 2026.04.25 TKG+

I  am afraid of walking too close to Chiu Chen-Hung (邱承宏)’s staircase.

It hangs in the middle of the gallery, supported by a steel structure. Even though I know it is safe, I still worry that it might suddenly collapse.

This striking scene is based on the artist’s life experience. On the morning of April 3rd, 2024, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck Hualien, destroying both the rocks of Taroko Gorge and buildings in the city centre. In an interview with Zian Chen on Ocula (Chiu Chen-Hung: ‘I’m Drawn to Art That Can Heal), Chiu recalls how difficult it was to walk through the post-disaster landscape; he felt as if he were floating, and he “dreamed far more during that time.”

His way of dealing with these emotions is through creation. He collected concrete, rebar, and bricks of demolished houses from a recycling yard, and reconstructed them into a helical staircase and stone books. The installation resembles a scene from a dystopian game, yet directly originates from his lived environment and dreams. The fragments he gathered function as a medium for storing memories. These memories only emerge through the artist’s intervention and the audience’s gaze.

Furthermore, through this imposing physicality, memory becomes substantial and texturally rough. It becomes encountered rather than represented. Whether or not the audience understands his context, they can still feel the emotion through the uncanny scene and the traces on its surface. (Elanor Wang)

2. Tidal Weavers: Islands Exchange

Tidal Weavers: Islands Exchange 2026.03.07 – 2026.05.31 Hong-Gah Museum

I visited Tidal Weavers twice. The first time was a quick walk-through on opening day, and I left without fully understanding several of the works. That uncertainty brought me back again, this time with a museum docent guiding us through the exhibition.

Part of the difficulty in approaching the show stems from how it was developed. The project evolved through a series of dialogues among curators from Indonesia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, centered on weaving as both a process for collective memory and interwoven knowledge. While artists were invited to engage in field research across regions and to embed themselves within local communities, the final exhibition primarily presents the material outcomes, which do not always immediately show the labor and conversations behind them.

That said, one work that stayed with me is My Deity Wants Me to War This by artist Yip Kai Chun. His research looks at Hakka deity culture brought to Indonesia by Chinese migrants, focusing on “tatung (跳童),” or human mediums whose costumes are revealed through dreams. Through portraits of “tatung” in these garments and an embroidered booklet detailing their interactions with deities, the work brings out a sense of how closely the spiritual and the everyday are intertwined.

This sense of cultural translation continues in Chang En-Man’s From Lima to Pulima. She noticed connections between dialects in Indonesia and her Paiwan language, such as how the number five is pronounced lima. She links this to pulima, a Paiwan term for someone skillful with their hands, and to her experience of seeing cave paintings with palm markings in Indonesia. Using clay pigments, she paints hand motifs onto bark cloth made from paper mulberry and installs the work in a way that echoes the museum’s surrounding mountain ridgeline.

It was through the small details pointed out along our tour that these works began to open up. Without that context, they can feel a bit distant at first. But with more time and through conversation, the exhibition slowly reveals the stories and connections woven into each piece. (iying)

3. Fallenstadt: the Rise and Fall of Cities

Fallenstadt: the Rise and Fall of Cities 2026.03.21–2026.07.12 Jut Art Museum

Fallenstadt: the Rise and Fall of Cities reads like a collection of absurd short stories. Each work is rooted in a distinct background and retains a clear narrative quality. Curator Nobuo Takamori turns, repeatedly, to colonised cultures and places that sit outside dominant histories. The exhibition sketches a bleak, almost terminal civilisation — cities “beleaguered by flooding, self-abasement, crises, global detritus, and encroaching warfare”.

The title “Fallenstadt” derives from “Stalinstadt”, planned cities in former East Germany during the Soviet period. Many of these now face shrinking populations and labour shortages. Their resistance to immigration accelerates their decline, causing them to recede quietly.

The exhibition does not name these sites directly, yet their presence is palpable. Every work here narrates a city’s doomsday prophecy. I move through them as if a ghost, pausing at each city’s looming end. I am there with artist Sebastian Moldovan holding a sign that reads “This is not Paris” in Bucharest, a city that mirrors and misremembers it. I am there with Ayoung Kim’s delivery riders, circulating through a ultra-capitalist sci-fi Seoul; her 2022 prophecy of the city and future labour situation feels less distant than it should. I am there in Mark Salvatus’s postcards, where islands edge towards disappearance under rising seas. The contexts differ, but one question holds: how does one persist amid ruin and chaos?

My favourite work is The Currency by Musquiqui Chihying, Gregor Kasper, and Elom 20ce. Rings and necklaces are displayed in the room, but the nearby videos tell their story: objects made from discarded, toxic electronics. The camera follows shamans as they move through local markets, gathering fragments. A self-proclaimed “warrior”, shows off his noxious electronic accessories, which supposedly protect him from physical violence. I get goosebumps as I imagine the poison going through his body. It sounds just like another dystopian fiction, but is actually a reality for many in Nigeria. (Elanor Wang)