Jam Wu, born in Tainan, Taiwan. Lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan. Jam Wu explores the relationship between imagery and medium. Employing elements such as paper cutting, video, and space, his artistic practice involves notions of culture and community through a profound participatory approach in local projects and publications. He dedicates his focus to the individual’s universal pursuit of the creative self, while emphasizing the uniqueness of each culture and individual. His spiritual motivation lies in his poetic and primitive yearnings. In his work, imagery, allegory, and concept manifest themselves not as aesthetic contemplation, but as spiritual comfort immersed in life.

Notable solo exhibitions include: Shadow Puppeteer, TKG+, Taipei, Taiwan (2023).  Jam Wu: Through the Walls, TKG+ Projects, Taipei, Taiwan (2021); Whispers of Animism, Chishang Art Center, Taitung, Taiwan (2020). Group exhibitions include: Spectrosynthesis II, Bangkok Art and Culture Center, Bangkok, Thailand (2019); Fra due culture, Palazzo Arese Borromeo, Milan; Magazzini dell’Arte Contemporanea, Sicily, Italy (2018); Art and Design — Dialogue With Materials, Toyama Prefectural Museum of Art and Design, Toyama, Japan (2017); Fully Loaded Tainan–New York 2017, Pfizer Building, New York, U.S. (2017); Art as Social Interaction, 1a Space, Hong Kong; The Pier-2 Art Center, Kaohsiung, Taiwan (2014). He was a resident artist at Cité internationale des arts, Paris, France (2022); Watermill Center, Water Mill, New York, U.S. (2009).

His works are housed in the collections of Facebook AIR Program, Hermès — Petit h Collection, Peninsula Paris, Deutsche Bank Center, Tainan Art Museum, and Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts.

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

I was born in the subtropical south of Taiwan, where humidity, vegetation, folk rituals, and ancestral memory are deeply woven into everyday life.

After graduating from the architecture department, I began working in spatial design for theater, especially in collaboration with dancers. Theater is always a collective act — a choreography of many bodies and minds. Yet when I returned to myself, paper cutting became the beginning of my personal dialogue with land and tradition.

I have long been influenced by folk art and maternal culture, fascinated by raw and ancient symbols that carry a primitive sense of mystery. Through cutting, I began searching for a way to give form to the images that drifted within my mind. That gesture — simple yet irreversible — became the origin of my artistic language.

What are the main themes or concepts you explore in your work?

My work explores what remains universal in us as human beings: our relationship with nature, and how we confront the disappearance of history and memory.

In the beginning, I did not confine myself to any fixed artistic form. Instead, I circled around the core questions I wished to approach, touching them indirectly, like tapping on the edges of a hidden structure. I was searching for different possibilities within traditions that often seem impossible to overturn.

Paper cutting, especially, carries a particular weight. It is classified as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of humanity — an ancient tradition deeply rooted in collective memory. I became interested in how such a historical form could still breathe differently within contemporary art.

Recently, I have been researching Taiwan as one of the origins of Austronesian culture, using weaving as another method to deconstruct paper cutting. I often dismantle old books, handwritten letters, or academic texts, transforming them into the material foundation of my works. Through cutting and weaving, personal memory intertwines with macro histories and cultural fragments, gradually forming primordial landscapes that speak about the origins of civilization itself.

Who or what are your biggest influences, both artistically and personally?

Literature — especially poetry — has profoundly shaped me. Contemporary Chinese poetry, with its rhythm, pauses, and resonance, constantly influences my intuition and sensory perception.

Cinema and music are also essential nourishment in my life. When I immerse myself in physical labor and repetitive handwork, music becomes something almost bodily — it stirs movement from within.

I did not graduate from an art academy. Becoming a visual artist was never part of my original life plan. Even now, this path still feels unfamiliar to me in certain ways, as though I am continuously walking into unknown terrain.

How does working with different art mediums, such as paper cutting, installation and weaving, connect you with specific culture and community?

Before entering university, I worked as a portrait photographer during the era of film photography. Later, studying architecture opened another perspective on how I understand space, structure, and human presence. Even now, I continue to participate in theater design. Looking back, my path has always been multidimensional.

When I initiate participatory or community-based projects, I approach them through many different layers — literature, recipes, belief systems, the body, craftsmanship — excavating local memory and hidden histories through everyday traces.

But when I return to my own personal practice, I seek something much simpler and more instinctive. I want to work with my hands in a direct and almost primitive way, thinking less, sensing more. For me, the most desired state of creation is deeply physical — quiet, intuitive, and bodily.

Can you describe a recent project or artwork that you are particularly proud of?

Recently, I began developing a new series titled Wave Of Spring, first presented in the group exhibition Cotton and Stone at the New Taipei City Art Museum.

In this series, I attempt to gather the flowing gestures and diluted stains of ink painting back into the silhouette of paper cutting. Liquid ink moves restlessly between painting and cut paper, creating a state of disturbance and transition between the two.

Wave Of Spring and Bonfire — Weaving will be presented this year at Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland, as well as in the inaugural Tainan Biennial.

What do you hope people take away from your art when they experience it?

I hope viewers can intuitively sense a spatial dimension woven out of flatness itself — something quiet, yet filled with latent force.

Within the dense layers of weaving and overlapping paper, I hope to evoke a sensory resonance connected to one’s own origins and landscapes of memory. History, to me, is never static. Through the artist’s hand, touch, and way of thinking, it continues to grow, shift, and flow.

Text and photo courtesy of Jam Wu

Website: www.jamwu.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jam.wu.jam/