The exhibition of the Hong Foundation‘s 2025 Canopy Project, “Ke-āu：Yu-Ting Tsai Solo Exhibition,” opened at the end of last month. In Taiwanese Hokkien, “Ke-āu” is a traditional term used to refer to the “wife” or female figure “behind the household.” Drawing from this phrase, the artist delves into matrilineal affection and memory, using mechanical installations and performance video to re-enter and reimagine family narratives.

Through bodily role-play and 3D modeling, Tsai reconstructs a youthful image of his mother and the surrounding environment of her past. Within the exhibition space, a red brick wall gradually collapses under mechanical percussion—offering an active, imaginative response to the irreversible nature of memory and time.

The exhibition features two works, including “Seven Days,” a time-based kinetic installation that reflects Yu-Ting Tsai’s background in mechanical engineering. After months of iterative experimentation, Tsai meticulously programmed and calibrated a system in which six iron hammers repeatedly strike a red brick wall. Over time, the wall slowly fractures and collapses, echoing the gradual erosion of memory and structure.

The artist measures time in accordance with the ritual timeline following his grandmother’s passing. Through the slow fragmentation of the wall and the accumulating mechanical scars, Seven Days gives physical form to the invisible passage of time. It also seeks to reckon with, and perhaps symbolically dismantle, the deeper roots of familial conflict—conflict that, long before the funeral rites, had already taken form as a red brick wall dividing one home into two. 

“Maternal bond” is a work composed of video and photography, piecing together the image of the artist’s mother in her youth through the perspective and recollections of the grandmother. In the video, Tsai invites his mother to apply makeup on him, styling him to resemble her younger self as seen in old photographs. In a moment of gentle confusion, the grandmother mistakes the artist for her daughter—causing three decades to collapse into one, folding time back upon itself in the slow current of memory.

Departing from conventional photo-compositing techniques, Tsai instead reconstructs the original scenes from the old photographs through 3D modeling. By digitally preserving and reanimating these past environments, the work evokes a subtle dissonance between the real and the virtual. Maternal bond was also invited to be exhibited at the 2024 PROYECTOR Festival in Madrid.

Yu-Ting Tsai is known for his interdisciplinary practice that weaves together installation, video, and photography to explore and reconstruct the entangled relationships between landscape, history, and memory. His recent solo exhibitions include “Seeking for Absent Forms in Forests” at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in late 2024, and Screaming, Laughing, Soaked Body, Loving Farewell at Changhua County Art Museum in May 2025. The latter featured the video work See You Next Time, which interlaces three narratives to examine border imaginaries across Taipei Island, Thailand, and the Golden Triangle. The piece probes the construction of self-identity, notions of home, and the condition of contemporary peripheral spaces. See You Next Time was also selected as a finalist for the 2025 Taoyuan International Art Award.

The Canopy Project is an annual open call exhibition program organized by the Hong Foundation, encouraging diverse and experimental artistic proposals. In the 2025 edition, selected artist Yu-Ting Tsai turns inward—following previous works set in vanishing mountain paths and urban peripheries—to reflect on the familial and the domestic. In Ke-āu: Yu-Ting Tsai Solo Exhibition, Tsai explores the generative possibilities of memory and time. The exhibition is currently on view and runs through August 2.

Venue
Hong Foundation（12F., No. 9, Sec. 2, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei 10093, Taiwan）

Artist
Yu-Ting Tsai

Exhibition Dates
June 28 – August 2, 2025

Gallery Hours
11:00-18:00（Closed on Sundays and public holidays. ）

Website
https://hongfoundation.org.tw/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/hongfoundation_art/

Contact
info@hongfoundation.org.tw

About Artist

Yu-Ting Tsai

Website: https://www.yu-ting-tsai.tw

Yu-Ting Tsai(b.1999, Taiwan) is an artist who lives and works in Taipei, currently pursuing a master’s degree in New Media Art at Taipei National University of the Arts. The vocabulary words used in the work consists of various fields of knowledge, such as nature, technology, and history to construct a multi-perspective viewing. The mediums include installations, videos, and photographs. The core of the work stems from life experiences, exploring and identifying self, spirits, places, and histories. The individual is viewed from a topological perspective, and the ideas are generated by navigating through different systems and coordinates to interweave a common location in points. Tsai has held solo exhibitions in “Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts“, “ALIEN Art Center”, ”Changhua County Art Museum”, and his works have been screened & exhibited in Taoyuan Art Center ”TMoFA 2025 Taoyuan International Art Award”, Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab ( C-LAB ), South Korea ”CICA Museum”, Spain “Festival PROYECTOR 2024”, the United States ”Annual Vertical Vision International Film Festival (VVIFF)”, Thailand, France, etc.

(Text and images courtesy of Hong Foundation)