New Taipei City Art Museum Exhibition Audio Guide

The story begins with the memories of this city. The opening exhibition of the New Taipei City Art Museum exhibited the images of the mining industry shot by the photographer CHANG Chao-tang, which not only document the laboring body, but also present the history of an industry that existed on this land. Stones, as a quotidian reality, used to be excavated and moved, changing the regional landscape. Thus, stones become an entry that responds to local memories.

However, the entry does not merely lead to New Taipei City. Mining is actually an industrial condition that many parts of the world have or are still experiencing. Stones relate to the connections between resources, laboring, and environments wherever they are. In the exhibition, you will see the tools, notes, and photos provided by the mining laborers. The artworks will also encourage you to reflect on the influence brought by mining on the environment, as well as an always difficult problem: who is, after all, qualified to possess these excavated materials?

The displayed objects and works in the venue are like ripples caused by a stone thrown into the water, spreading circle after circle to surround one story after another. You can also visit the exhibition at your will to rearrange the segments, embarking on your own adventure across varied industries, scales of time, and laboring experiences.

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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

Have you noticed? The three displayed objects here are all from the Houtong Miner’s Culture and History Museum. The director of the museum, ZHOU Chao-nan, had worked in the mine since he was 14. After retiring and leaving the mine, he found that the stories of mining laborers were bit by bit forgotten.

To maintain the memories, he called on other retired mining laborers to raise funds for establishing the Houtong Miner’s Culture and History Museum, in the hopes of preserving the gradually disappearing history. ZHOU Chao-nan started as a frontline worker and eventually became a foreman. The showcased objects are the tools he carried with him when he worked in the mine, which witnessed the laboring traces of workers day after day.

Divert your eyes to another side, and you will see the notes from the overseer of the mine works. After graduating from junior college, Mr. Wang used to be the overseer of the mine works at Yingge, in charge of workplace safety and administration. What he left here are his work diaries and mining textbooks, which record the institutions, risks, and the mining world in his eyes with his personal feelings.

Two different positions show two kinds of narratives. However, both of them piece together a more concrete and intimate history of the mining industry.

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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

A stone from the other side of the world brings a distinct story. For the artist Rayyane Tabet, the heirlooms from his great-grandfather are like a stone thrown into the water, stirring ripples in his mind and opening up a broader world for him.

On the surface, his great-grandfather was an assistant to an archaeologist, but in truth, he undertook a mission as a government spy to secretly surveil the archaeologist Max von Oppenheim, who travelled all the way from Germany to Syria. Through family history, Tabet realizes that archaeology is not only an exploration of knowledge, but also a realm affecting power and politics. Oppenheim transported substantial Syrian stone tablets back to Germany in the name of “cultural heritage preservation,” which were bombed during World War II and destroyed into rubble. The outcome of the stone tablets makes the statement “Artifacts are safest when being brought to the West” sound satirical.

Hence, Tabet re-depicts the traces of the stone tablets through rubbing, attempting to assemble the appearance of the archaeological site. He also aims to suggest a question: Who are the appropriate ones to preserve and interpret the artifacts?

Another clue comes from a gentle heirloom, a wool carpet. It is a gift from Bedouins when his great-grandfather served as the archaeological assistant. The Bedouin are ancient nomadic tribes living in the deserts, bearing a rich and delicate culture. Oppenheim wrote several ethnographical works for them, recording their different inhabited regions and genealogies. Today, the Bedouin still live on the margins of the state and society, and the carpet is not only a memory left by the artist’s great-grandfather, but also a life story of the Bedouin.

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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

The story should be traced back to April last year. At that time, the New Taipei City Art Museum started with the history of the city, exhibiting several works related to the textile industry in Xinzhuang. The exhibition planted a seed in the curatorial team’s minds: How will the memories of the city be if we retrospect them from the perspective of the textile industry?

In recent years, the curatorial team has observed that more and more artists have returned to the medium of threads. They create through weaving and handcrafting in the field of contemporary art, making cotton yarn back into the creative vision again. It is more than a choice of mediums, but much more an act that guides people to consider the laboring experiences and cultural transmission carried by threads.

Like the mining industry, the textile industry used to be rooted deeply in the daily lives of New Taipei City and support countless families. Threads were pulled and entangled in factories, transmitting techniques and memories across generations. Thus, soft threads meet hard stones in the exhibition, encouraging us to think about how industries shape the city as well as our lives in the flow of time.

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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

In the New Stone Age, stones are tools used for cutting, striking, twisting the yarn, and weaving fabrics. For archaeologists, stones are testaments to civilizations, telling the existence and history of ethnic groups silently.

On the borderline between Israel and Lebanon, a stone has become a symbol of protest. In the front area of the venue, as the cultural theorist Edward Said cast a stone toward the Israeli army camp, the stone bore not only anger, but also the power of resistance.

On the Ketagalan Boulevard in Taiwan, to defend their traditional living areas, the indigenous peoples endow stones with colors to draw people’s attention. Stones here become a token of bringing people together, bearing cultures, and protesting. In the creative process of the artist CHIU Chen-hung, on the other hand, stones are materials for the restoration of memories. The artist reproduces the cracks on the sculptures, demonstrating another kind of repair work.

From tools to symbols, from resistance to restoration, stones roll through the ages, secretly reminding us that the most silent materials usually tend to contain the deepest power.

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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

The final story begins in the era of American aid. The old photo in the venue shows the distribution process of supplies, whereas the photographer didn’t shoot the scene of a rattan basket on the back of an indigenous girl. Rattan baskets were often used as containers of American aid supplies. The sweaters sent to tribes were also unraveled into thread, since for Truku women, only blankets woven with their own hands, called “qabang” in the Truku language, are assets with social value. The fabric the artist Labay Eyong inherits from her grandmother is exactly the continuation of the memory.

The rattan objects displayed in the venue are not merely tools for the Amis people. Rattan craft is traditionally a skill exclusive for men, and when elders pass away, rattan items in production are usually left unfinished. The semi-finished rattan basket in the exhibition venue, called “fakar” in the Amis language, was passed on to the artist Akac Orat by a tribal elder’s partner after his death, in hopes that the rattan basket would be completed one day. It also signifies that the craft still awaits being passed down.

These woven and braided items connect life, laboring, and culture. They show us that every thread and every object in our hands holds memories and histories of ethnic groups.

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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

This exhibition is presented by the artist collective You Don’t Know Me At All. Its title is a playful take on the lyric, “If this ain’t love, then why am I so heartbroken?” At first, it might sound like a song about romance—but the artists ask, is it really just about love? They contrast the “Ai” in the lyric, pointing to artificial intelligence, with “Bi,” which echoes the Taiwanese Hokkien word for sorrow (pi-ai). Using dark humor and clever wordplay, the works create a space where meanings can shift, letting each viewer discover new ways of understanding.

The exhibition begins with two place names that are often confused: Taiwan’s North Coast and Japan’s Hokkaido. It makes you wonder: is your sense of familiarity with a place shaped by personal experience, or by seeing similar images over and over on social media?

Through imagery, spatial design, and sound, the artists present home videos and street interviews filmed during their travels. Merchandise promoted on social media is transformed into site-specific installations and paintings, questioning the ties between tourism, consumption, and branding. Found objects such as souvenirs and trinkets are used to unpack the emotional bond between Instagram-ready landmarks and their viewers.

Inspired by a shared theme while extending their individual practices, the participating artists— Ciou Zih-yan, Ni Hsiang, Feng Chih-ming, and Chien Chih-feng—respond to issues of technology and the artificial, piracy and imitation, tourism and consumption, as well as labor and art. Through imagery, light, and sound, they invite viewers into a space of overlapping narratives, encouraging reflection on physical experience suspended between reality and fiction.

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If this ain’t Ai, don’t make me Bi.

2026.01.17-04.12

｜Artists｜ Ciou Zih-yen, Ni Hsiang, Feng Chih-ming, Chien Chih-feng

｜More Information｜https://ntcart.museum/en/exhibition_content.aspx?id=H2512001

What do you see in the work before you? This is a working space set up by the artist in the public area of the lobby, inspired by a desk found in museum storage. Here, you are invited to use material left over from past exhibitions to make your own artwork. Take a trip down memory lane, and recall what it felt like to make art by hand as a child. The works created by participants are then placed in Vending Machine, an artwork located outside Gallery 4A, where they are sold as souvenirs. In this process, the viewer becomes more than just a viewer, but a maker and co-creator. When another visitor purchases one of these works, they are, in effect, paying for someone else’s fruits of labor. What, then, is carried away: a beautiful memory, or a lingering grudge? There is always a fine line between the two.

In our experience of travel, souvenirs often stand for objects that preserve beautiful memories. By transforming the form of souvenirs, the artist asks: do we live in mementos of sorrow, or in memories of difficult times? Due to the limitations of the museum system, the proceeds from this transformation of artistic labor and economic value will not change the current overwork of art administrators or participating artists. What it can do, however, is act as a temporary lifeline for this Bi (sad) art industry, allowing us to see the long-standing structural overexploitation in the field.

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If this ain’t Ai, don’t make me Bi.

2026.01.17-04.12

｜Artists｜ Ciou Zih-yen, Ni Hsiang, Feng Chih-ming, Chien Chih-feng

｜More Information｜https://ntcart.museum/en/exhibition_content.aspx?id=H2512001

The vending machine in the public area on the 4th floor was inspired by one of the artist’s trips to Japan. What struck him most on that trip were the countless vending machines scattered across the city. Think about your own travels: have you ever spotted one tucked on a street corner, at a train station, or in a quiet alley? They seem convenient, yet somehow they blend into the city. Because the artist didn’t speak the local language, every time he put in a coin, it was like opening a mystery box—he never knew what would come out. For this artwork, the artist has given the machine a playful twist: when a visitor inserts coins, it plays prerecorded music and sound effects at random.

The merchandise in the machine comes mostly from leftover materials from the artist’s past art-making process, or works created by participants in Get Off Work on Time. Through these quirky objects, the viewer is invited to reconsider the act of purchse and the element of chance within it, as well as the lingering emotions that inhabit everyday life and labor.

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If this ain’t Ai, don’t make me Bi.

2026.01.17-04.12

｜Artists｜ Ciou Zih-yen, Ni Hsiang, Feng Chih-ming, Chien Chih-feng

｜More Information｜https://ntcart.museum/en/exhibition_content.aspx?id=H2512001

Before entering the exhibition space, the viewer will first encounter this wall. Inspired by poster walls, the artist rearranges images from signs, advertisements, and billboards using collage, reorganization, and symbolic suggestion. These images reference the familiar travel promotions and commercial branding of Japan’s Hokkaido and Taiwan’s North Coast. The artist invites the viewer to rethink: how is our imagination of tourist attractions being shaped?

In this work, the artist intentionally highlights painting’s original function: as a decorative medium. He reconfigures the front hall of the exhibition space using painting and mixed media. In doing so, he responds to the conventional display framework, while reimagining the relationship between the artwork and the space around it.

Beneath your feet, the floor is patterned like sea waves, evoking the leisurely strolls people take along the beach on vacation. Alongside the souvenirs in Vending Machine, the artist turns his attention to the traces left behind on each trip—the items that were once cherished as merchandise, only to eventually become discarded objects.

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If this ain’t Ai, don’t make me Bi.

2026.01.17-04.12

｜Artists｜ Ciou Zih-yen, Ni Hsiang, Feng Chih-ming, Chien Chih-feng

｜More Information｜https://ntcart.museum/en/exhibition_content.aspx?id=H2512001