New Taipei City Art Museum Exhibition Audio Guide

Folk into Image

Folk culture is the sum of collective life—the stick of incense for peace in a family hall, the lights and dramas on an outdoor stage, and the legends shared across generations. It shapes the contours of culture and serves as a mark of identity.

When folk customs become a source of inspiration, fragments of daily life are transformed into rich symbols that manifest collective memories. For instance, in Wu Wang-ju's Tiger Gods (III): Peitian Temple – Tiger Gods of Heaven and Earth, bold lines and saturated colors document deities from traditional beliefs. In Yuan Chin-ta's Great Fortune at First Sight, we encounter the familiar figures of the "Seventh Lord and Eighth Lord," reinterpreted through playful forms to convey auspicious blessings.

Beyond reproducing shared experiences, these works also reflect the unique personal perspectives of the artists. Liao Shiou-ping draws from his childhood memories of temple rituals, transforming and collaging elements of jingyi—spirit money—to symbolize the various facets of folk life. Li Jiun-yang utilizes traditional temple painting techniques to reshape puppet figures and reconfigure elements of folklore, ultimately weaving new mythological narratives.

In this section, 'Into Image' serves as a metaphor for creation on one hand, and a practical method of capturing folk traditions to retell their stories on the other.

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NTCAM Collection: Between Arts and Folk Cultures

2026.05.09-08.02

Curatorial｜Research and Collection Department of NTCAM

Artists｜WU Wang-ju, HU Chia, GUO Dung-jung, LIAO Shiou-ping, YUAN Chin-taa, SO Yo-hen, LI Jiun-yang, LEE Shi-chi, PENG Hung-chih, SHEN Chao-liang

Ritual Scenes

As a site for practicing folk culture, rituals often showcase the most vibrant scenes of daily life. In the section "Ritual Scenes," artists observe these folk gatherings through various media, capturing one lively, spirited moment after another.

We see Hu Chia using watercolors to capture wide-angle scenes of boisterous temple fairs—the surging crowds in the foreground, the theatrical stage in the back, and even the snack vendors lined up on the side. Guo Tung-jung uses oil paints to freeze moments in time, depicting the dancing golden dragon of the Ginza festival, the crowds releasing sky lanterns in Pingxi, the silhouette of Longshan Temple, and the deities upon the altar. Furthermore, Shen Chao-liang, drawing from over a decade of fieldwork, documents Taiwan's unique Vaudeville Troupes performing at weddings, funerals, and celebrations. Portraits of performers, glimpses of life on and off the stage, and images of mobile stage trucks under the twilight are lined up across the gallery wall, revealing the photographer’s deep and empathetic gaze.

As you slowly scan the room, these static works begin to connect like film frames. The sounds of the ritual gradually rise, and the images stir into motion. You can almost hear the deafening drums and the clamor of the crowd in the background. A lion dancer leaps, the crowd swells, and the brilliant lights of the stage truck dazzle the eyes. The performers' voices, slightly raw through the speakers, carry a dance that is nonetheless incredibly beautiful.

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NTCAM Collection: Between Arts and Folk Cultures

2026.05.09-08.02

Curatorial｜Research and Collection Department of NTCAM

Artists｜WU Wang-ju, HU Chia, GUO Dung-jung, LIAO Shiou-ping, YUAN Chin-taa, SO Yo-hen, LI Jiun-yang, LEE Shi-chi, PENG Hung-chih, SHEN Chao-liang

Observing the Human Condition

The "Folk" is more than just a collection of daily scenes and experiences; it is a vital arena where people interact and establish social structures. Thus, artists observe society through a unique lens, employing techniques such as appropriation, transformation, and the reconfiguration of elements to raise inquiries about specific social phenomena.

First, Peng Hung-chih collected a vast number of "abandoned deities," retelling the story of the gambling craze in 1980s Taiwan—a phenomenon that reflected human greed and utilitarianism when people took their frustrations out on their faith. Secondly, Lee Shi-chi focuses on the act of gambling, using exaggerated forms in his work to provoke reflection on the behavior of betting. So Yo-hen, on the other hand, utilizes the traditional craft of "paper offerings" to orchestrate a drama of the deceased traveling to the spirit world, exploring Taiwan’s complex colonial history with a humorous undertone.

In the section "Observing the Human Condition," "observing" is more than just seeing and discovering; it is a process of translation. Consequently, the exhibition features interactive installations in the gallery, selecting three keywords—"spirit money", "Tiger God," and "The Seventh and Eighth Lords." We invite visitors to experience the process of translation by using AI to generate images. Through various combinations, contexts, and stylistic transformations, what new forms will folk art take? In the interactive zone at the end of the gallery, we look forward to savoring these journeys of translation together and sharing our reflections.

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NTCAM Collection: Between Arts and Folk Cultures

2026.05.09-08.02

Curatorial｜Research and Collection Department of NTCAM

Artists｜WU Wang-ju, HU Chia, GUO Dung-jung, LIAO Shiou-ping, YUAN Chin-taa, SO Yo-hen, LI Jiun-yang, LEE Shi-chi, PENG Hung-chih, SHEN Chao-liang

Fly with Pacha, into the Aerocene portrays the long-standing collaboration between the Aerocene Foundation and Indigenous Communities in northern Argentina. Their collective resistance against industrial lithium mining defends ancestral lands and the vital water that supports them.

Extending this gesture, the Fairclouds project invited local and Argentine communities to draw cloudscapes of these salt flats. These "imagined clouds" emerge as an intergenerational artwork, connecting participants to more just cycles of water, memory, and life.

Oriented toward weather-dependent interdependency, Aerocene presents for the first time in Taiwan, Museo Aero Solar: a flying museum built from reused plastic bags, collectively assembled by participants and lifted only with the heat of the Sun. This aerosolar sculpture proposes flight without fossil fuels: at once a sculpture, a climate action, and a gesture of commoning. Museo Aero Solar is an invitation to build and dream collectively.

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Tomás Saraceno: Interwoven

2026.03.21–2026.09.06

NTCAM Gallery 6A、6B

In the room of Thermodynamic Imaginary, an ecology of air, glass, and light reveals the invisible movements of energy that sustain life across scales and spectra. Aerocene sculptures float as prototypes for fossil-free flight; interconnected geodesic sculptures from the artist's long-standing Cloud Cities series mirror vapor and equilibrium, proposing alternative urbanisms.

Glass works such as Pneuma and Ibytu hold air as sculptural matter, while Ha Chi Ki… captures the breath in flux. Together, the works compose a theater of thermodynamic exchange, where air becomes a medium of connection and every breath a reminder of planetary interdependence.

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Tomás Saraceno: Interwoven

2026.03.21–2026.09.06

NTCAM Gallery 6A、6B

Algor-(h)i(y)thms echoes the more-than-human architectures introduced earlier, transforming the spider/web into an inhabitable, tensile environment where bodies encounter new forms of connectivity and balance. Participants are invited to experience a different physics of coexistence, where movement and vibration become ways of listening.

Each converging node within Algor-(h)i(y)thms corresponds to resonant frequencies across micro- and macroscopic phenomena. These range from the peak courtship signals of an orb-weaving spider to the frequencies of a halo formed by ultrarelativistic electrons surrounding a distant galactic cloud. By doing so, the artwork links our bodily perception with cosmic scales of relation.

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Tomás Saraceno: Interwoven

2026.03.21–2026.09.06

NTCAM Gallery 6A、6B

Arachnophilia refers to an affinity or fascination with spiders, in contrast to the more familiar arachnophobia. Across cultures, spiders have long been seen as beings of wisdom and mystery, and practices of "spider divination" continue today, asking spiders about past, present, and future.

For over two decades, Tomás Saraceno and Arachnophilia, the interdisciplinary project-community he founded, has collaborated with spiders, observing how a spider’s woven web functions as an extension of its body to sense the world through vibration. This section features two works. Webs Of At-ten(s)ion presents intricate, three-dimensional constellations woven by different spider species—a choreography of movement, silk, and time. Though spiders in nature often avoid one another, here they weave sequentially within the same structure, forming a dialogue across time and suggesting possibilities of coexistence. How to Entangle the Universe in a Spider/web? transforms these webs into cosmic cartographies, drawing parallels between spider architectures and the filamentary networks of dark matter, inviting reflection on the invisible connections linking micro and macro worlds, earth and cosmos.

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Tomás Saraceno: Interwoven

2026.03.21–2026.09.06

NTCAM Gallery 6A、6B

What do you see in the clouds? What latencies are contained within their waters?

These walls feature the intergenerational artwork Fairclouds, composed by clouds of imagination drawn by participants from local workshops and by children in Argentina. For the Communities of Salinas Grandes, water is life. They have long-defended its environment against industrial lithium mining that extracts, per tonne of this ‘white gold’, as much as 2 million liters of groundwater. In today’s world, clouds most ubiquitously embody a story of neo-colonial, industrial extraction, as physical clouds are drained and converted into fuel for digital memory and technologies of control. Fairclouds invites you to become part of a community for more just cycles of water, memory and life. You are invited to enter Interwoven and contribute to this ongoing, collective project.

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Tomás Saraceno: Interwoven

2026.03.21–2026.09.06

NTCAM Gallery 6A、6B

Welcome to the New Taipei City Art Museum. We invite you to explore Interwoven, the solo exhibition of artist Tomás Saraceno.

In the 1970s, environmental movements framed “nature” as an object in need of protection and sought to return the world to a pre-industrial state of purity. Entering the twenty-first century, however, scholars introduced the concept of the Anthropocene, arguing that humans have become a geological force transforming the Earth itself. Others argue that the current era should be referred to as the Capitalocene, in which the climate crisis and pollution are driven by capitalism's relentless need for profit and growth, rather than an inherent human trait.

Furthermore, this view challenges the idea of “pristine nature,” resisting binaries of touched and untouched, and recognizing that such notions of ‘returning to nature’ exclude Indigenous voices. Such cultures, in which ancestral knowledge and wisdom have guided Indigenous peoples to live in sustainable and equilibrated ways, are ones from which many of us can still learn a great deal.

For more than two decades, artist Tomás Saraceno has cultivated forms of knowledge that emerge from collaboration. His Berlin-based studio functions as an experimental environment where art, science, and social action converge. Across installations, floating sculptures, and grassroots activism, Saraceno's practice invites a (re)consideration of interdependence and openness.

In Interwoven, Saraceno’s first large-scale solo exhibition in Taiwan, audiences are invited to attune with and learn from the web(s) of life—together with the air, spiders, clouds, and the cosmos. Visitors will encounter immersive installations where spider/web architectures and flying museums of reused materials become vehicles to imagine a multiplicity of futures.

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Tomás Saraceno: Interwoven

2026.03.21–2026.09.06

NTCAM Gallery 6A、6B

Try to imagine: if memories were tangible, what would they be like? Would they be stretched and folded by time, or would they be worn and torn to gradually disappear? If so, what would happen to handcrafting and laboring experiences carrying these memories? How would they be transmitted, changed, or even cease little by little during generational shifts?

The story begins in New Taipei City. It used to be a place where textile machines rumbled and ore rolled, with laboring rhythms engraved on bodies and the land. Of Thread and Stone is an exhibition exploring the relationships between people, events, and objects. Stones and threads are born all over the world, but they intertwine distinct stories, responding to each other in similar contexts of laboring and life.

Following a strand of colorful thread or an inconspicuous crushed stone, the exhibition not only questions the functions and shapes of objects, but also further explores the colonial industries behind the thread and stone, as well as the resistance traces left at the sites of laboring activities and local lives. The journey is like an archaeological act, delving into the past while revealing our life at this moment—the light side ignored by us, along with the unspeakable dark side.

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Of Thread and Stone

｜Curator｜TSOU Ting, WANG Han-fang

｜Artists｜Jam WU, Kieren KARRITPUL, Forensic Architecture, CHIU Chen-hung, KAO Ya-ting, CHEONG See-min, Akac Orat, Slavs and Tatars, HUANG Po-chih, Rayyane TABET、jiandyin、Nii Nami