1. HUANG Xuan: Exhaust and Shoring

HUANG Xuan: Exhaust and Shoring 2026.05.29 – 2026.6.29 A jian space

Every object has its conventional use. For example, people use a lamp to light a room, a comb to groom their hair, and an escalator to go up and down. However, HUANG Xuan intentionally breaks with this common consensus. She uses a lamp like her hat, a comb to brush the grass, and an escalator to deliver eggs.

HUANG is good at using her own body as a medium. Most of her work focuses on performance and video art. She uses simple actions to engage the audience, develop, and uncover the boundaries and limitations in our daily lives. She also cares about the relationships between objects, function, and the human body, seeking to reveal the nuances of human habits and conventions by distorting them in a ridiculous but humorous way.

In a video from the exhibition Exhaust and Snoring, a vacuum cleaner sucks bubbles, an action that resembles drinking foam from the top of a beer. In another, HUANG employs a high-pressure water gun, commonly installed in car washes, to shoot objects into the air. This reminded me of Cinthia Marcelle’s Cruzada (2010), which relates to conflict or struggle, but HUANG gives it a happy ending, naming it Fireworks.

HUANG also blows the song “The Love” with a straw in a bowl as fish swim around. This counterintuitive action made me laugh, especially because of the long label next to the work. They are usually used to present a full statement about the work, but here it is actually the lyrics of the song.

Some works provoked laughter but also left an uneasy feeling. In a seemingly Sisyphean video installed near the gallery stairs, she places eggs on an escalator one by one. I wondered where the eggs would end up or if they would break. Or was someone standing by to catch them? She seems to be dancing on the boundaries of acceptable social behaviour; slightly uncomfortable —but not too much. (Elanor Wang)

2. A Song of Angry Men

A Song of Angry Men 2026.6.27-2026.8.9 Tickets available at https://www.opentix.life/event/2039524426554306560

In Taiwan, buses have long been a means of transportation used to mobilize people. Whenever a major protest takes place in Taipei, it is common to see news footage of buses carrying supporters from across the island.

Yet what happens inside those buses often remains unseen.

This is where A Song of Angry Men, a mobile theatre work by the TTC Studios, begins. The performance follows a self-help association on its way to a press conference, where former residents of a condemned building seek justice for the homes they have lost. As audience members board the bus, they are absorbed into this collective body, listening to recorded conversations in which different figures debate everything from protest slogans to leadership.

The work’s most compelling device is its voting system. Each participant is given a mobile phone through which they can vote on points of disagreement. Yet every vote is followed by an “objection” option, allowing decisions to be challenged and potentially overturned. Although the audience never speaks directly, they are repeatedly invited to participate in the group’s internal politics.

** spoiler altert**

The system eventually reveals its flaw. In the performance I attended, every decision made by the majority was overturned, leading to growing frustration and confusion among the audience. As tensions mounted, a new leader was suddenly “elected,” seemingly out of nowhere.

By this point, I was no longer certain whether I had missed a crucial detail amid the dizziness of the bus’s winding route and blacked-out windows, or whether the performance was deliberately embracing absurdity. The experience felt strangely familiar, echoing the way political realities can suddenly shift, leaving us unsure of how power changed hands in the first place.

Although the ending felt somewhat abrupt, I still think A Song of Angry Men effectively uses the simple premise of a bus ride to expose the fragility of democratic processes. (iying)

3. Old Dog

Old Dog 2026.06.06-2026.06.28 MAISON ACME

I can still vividly recall the anxiety I felt when I was about to turn 30. The thought of getting older and becoming an adult really freaked me out.

That’s probably why I immediately related to Zheng Wen Hao, who is around my age, titling his exhibition Old Dog. Even this early in our careers, the exhaustion and self-doubt that accompany years of balancing a full-time office job with an art practice sustained after work already feel more real than anything else.

Even so, the exhibition never feels weighed down by self-pity. Instead, these emotions surface through the quiet persistence of his kinetic installations.

A violin assembled from leftover materials repeatedly draws its own bow. A pair of mechanical feet gently wobble beneath a park bench. A hand saw endlessly cuts into a chair stripped of its outer layer. These repetitive, and at times simultaneous movements give form to the different threads of Zheng’s life, from a long-standing engagement with discarded materials and his role as a caregiver to the feeling of isolation during the pandemic.

In two works centered on his own hands, Zheng thinks through his dual role as both an artist and an office worker. An oversized paper crane made from collaged paper pokes fun at the assumption that artists naturally have skillful hands, while also revealing Zheng’s long-running struggle with origami. Another depicts his stiff hands receiving acupuncture treatment in ink painting, the very medium he teaches for a living but has never felt fully confident using in his own practice.

Also on display are the sketches made during his daily two-hour commute. Rather than functioning merely as studies, they reveal how his practice developed in the in-between hours of working life. In the end, Old Dog is about continuing to make things anyway, finding ways to transform the compromises of adulthood into something tangible and shareable. (iying)