Chiu Chen-Hung (b. 1983, Hualien, Taiwan) received his MFA in Plastic Arts from the National Taiwan University of Arts in 2008. He currently lives and works in Hualien, Taiwan. His practice, primarily in installation and sculpture, unfolds like an archaeological expedition. Through his work, he excavates traces and presences once embedded in lived time and space, developing what he describes as a vast methodology of memory restoration.

Major exhibitions include: Art Basel Hong Kong (Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Hong Kong, 2025, 2023); Frieze Seoul (COEX Convention & Exhibition Center, Seoul, Korea, 2025, 2023); The Sovereign Asian Art Prize (Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Hong Kong, 2022); Kunstfest Weimar (Gut Holzhausen, Weimar, Germany, 2021); Embroidered Swallows Across Original Jungle (TKG+, Taipei, Taiwan, 2021); The Secret South: From Cold War Perspective to Global South in Museum Collection (Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, 2020); Asian Art Biennial: The Strangers from Beyond the Mountain and the Sea (National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan, 2019); Phototaxis (Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany, 2019); Island Tales: Taiwan and Australia (Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, 2019); Taiwan Biennial: The Possibility of an Island (National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan, 2016); Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin (La Gaîté Lyrique, Paris & Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2014); and the Liverpool Biennial (LJMU Exhibition Centre, Liverpool, UK, 2012). He has participated in residency programs at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2019), and Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2012).

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

I was born in Hualien, on the east coast of Taiwan—a city framed by mountains and the sea. Growing up surrounded by nature, I spent a lot of time hiking or swimming in rivers. I was always sensitive to sounds, smells, and textures, and those little details often sparked my curiosity. Hualien is also a place shaped by constant natural disasters like earthquakes and typhoons, which gave me an early awareness of change and uncertainty. That sensitivity to shifting environments still plays a big role in my work today.

Later, I moved to Taipei for university, where I majored in sculpture. The academic training gave me a strong foundation in traditional sculptural techniques, but instead of following those conventions strictly, I started using them as points of dialogue—stretching, transforming, and questioning them. Now, my practice mainly takes the form of sculpture and installation.

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

A lot of my work revolves around what I’d call the “hidden emotional moments” in everyday life, as well as shared collective memory. I often think of my practice as a kind of ongoing archaeology—digging into fragments of time and space to find traces of what once existed but has since been forgotten. These traces might be architectural remains, leftover objects, or emotional imprints tied to past experiences. I treat them as clues, which I then collect, transform, and piece together through sculpture and installation into new narratives.

This process feels like a kind of memory repair—not about restoring things exactly as they were, but about reassembling broken fragments so they can be felt in a new way. Often, meaning emerges through cracks and gaps, allowing us to look again at small, overlooked moments that carry weight. For me, making art is both mending and extending—it connects us back to the past while also opening new space for resonance in the present.

How has your artistic style evolved over time?

My work shifts depending on the conditions of time and place, which means it has developed in different directions across different periods. Each phase has its own focus—some series last just a few months, while others stretch out over years.

Because of my early training in sculpture, I developed a deep sensitivity to materials and forms. If traditional sculpture is often about building “monuments,” my work tends to dismantle time and reassemble it into something else. Rather than pursuing the forceful, monumental presence often associated with traditional sculpture, I approach things from a softer perspective, working with absence, with gaps, or with what I sometimes call “found objects without confidence”—forms that feel tentative, fragile, or incomplete.

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

One project that’s very close to me is Concrete Zoo, which I’ve been working on for the past five years. These concrete animal sculptures were once a common sight in Taiwanese parks and schoolyards in the 1970s. They carry nostalgic memories of childhood but also reflect how urban space, through design and policy, tried to recreate a version of “nature.” Most were handmade by anonymous concrete workers, modeled after exotic animals, and their shapes often look awkward, even clumsy. Yet they hold deep historical meaning. To me, they’re like monuments to “substitute nature,” lying quietly on the edges of cities.

As modernization pushed forward, these sculptures were gradually replaced by plastic playground equipment, turning them into forgotten urban ruins. My approach is very direct: I dig them out from where they’ve been abandoned, restore them, then take them on “journeys”—to the sea, to the wind—before eventually returning them to their original sites. The process itself includes forgetting, remembering, searching, restoring, rebirth, traveling, exhibiting, and finally returning to reality.

It’s both an act of repairing childhood memories and a kind of alternative sculptural archaeology. Exhibition budgets are often redirected into restoration costs, and the works are then taken to different shorelines or sites of significance. Unlike mainstream heritage tourism or festival-style displays, this creates an ambiguous, slightly humorous visual context that invites viewers to rethink ideas of monuments, memory, and the spirit of place.

What challenges have you faced as an artist, and how have you overcome them?

I love trying new things, and for me, every project is a fresh challenge. From researching and experimenting with materials to adjusting works based on different exhibition spaces, there are always obstacles—sometimes technical, sometimes practical. But I actually enjoy problem-solving; it gives the work more life.

For example, in Concrete Zoo, each animal sculpture weighs several tons. Digging them out, transporting, restoring, and exhibiting them requires enormous manpower and resources. I use exhibitions as opportunities to fund restoration and take the animals on their “travels.” So far, I’ve managed to restore 24 of them. It’s an incredibly labor-intensive process—sometimes it feels futile, but it’s also deeply romantic. Over time, it has developed into a creative method unique to this project.

In another project, Daylighting, I carve shadows into the walls of abandoned buildings. Some of these places are about to be demolished, some hold special meaning, while others are just derelict ruins. Each wall has a different hardness and requires a different carving approach. On top of that, I have to deal with mosquitoes, sun, and rain while working. But the challenge is part of it—focusing on capturing fleeting plant shadows and preserving them. The overlapping carvings become time traces. Sometimes I translate them into colored cement panels made with minerals, turning shadows into textures like fragments.

In my Embroidered Swallows series, I bring terrazzo techniques into sculpture, transforming cracks and breaks into three-dimensional forms combined with brass and minerals. And in Night and Soul, I collected fragments from earthquake-damaged buildings—twisted rebar, shattered concrete—and reshaped them into sculptures resembling bookshelves and books. It became like a shelter in a parallel world, a place for things that have lost their anchor.

Every project involves immense labor and engineering, constantly pushing me to solve new problems. For me, these challenges are extensions of sculpture, and even extensions of the body itself. And with each extension, new possibilities open up.

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

I hope that people don’t feel the need to rely too much on background knowledge when experiencing my work. Instead, I want them to engage through their own bodily senses—feeling the materials, the weight, even the temperature of the pieces. Maybe those sensations will take them back to a particular memory or a fleeting moment in their own lives. For me, it’s in those moments that we can meet each other, and maybe even come a little closer.

Text & photo courtesy of Chiu Chen-Hung

Website: https://chiuchenhung.blogspot.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chenhungchiu/