Chen Hui-Chiao 陳慧嶠 Taiwan, b. 1964

Chen Hui-Chiao has been a seminal driving force behind the post-martial law art scene in Taipei since the 1990s. Between 1988 and 2018, she balanced working in art administration with the cultivation of her own practice, co-founding IT Park in 1988. IT Park was the first independent artist-run space in Taiwan used for art gathering, discourse, and to host exhibitions. This experimental atmosphere set the stage for Chen’s bourgeoning artistic journey throughout the 1990s, leading her to become a pioneer of installation practice in Taiwan.

Chen specializes in using painterly surfaces and holistic installations to capture the sky, memory, and dreams. Her minimalist compositions employ sprawling and expanding forms, developing an artistic vocabulary that encapsulates tender emotions within harmonious geometric forms. Chen’s oeuvre is comprised of simple everyday objects including flowers, feathers, needles, ping-pong balls, steel plates, and beds, amongst other materials. She plays with the material contradictions of these objects – warm and cold, soft and rigid, round and pointy, to transform her sensual and poetic vision into a rational and idiosyncratic visual vocabulary that reflects the spiritual connections between art, life and the body.

Chen Hui-Chiao’s works have been exhibited at a number of significant international exhibitions, including the touring group exhibitions “Inside Out – New Chinese Art”, in association with Asia Society and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1998-1999), and “Face to Face – Contemporary Art from Taiwan” (1999-2000). She further participated in the 4^th Gwangju Biennial (2002), and the 10^th Istanbul Biennial (2007). Her works can be found in key collections and museums, including the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung; the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, and the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts.

Selected institutional highlights include: “Here and Now” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (2006); “Beyond the Tree” at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei (2012); “Affect Machine: Self-healing in the Post-Capitalist Era” at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei (2021), and “We Always Need to Create New Stories for the World” at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei (2025).