Cai Guo Jie and Xu Tan in Conversation with Huang Chien-Hung, moderated by Wang Jing
The Moving Image as Unconcealment
Date: 11 July 2026 (Saturday), 3-5pm
Venue: gdm Taipei, 390 Ruiguang Road, Neihu
Text in the Room, Deferred unveils as the deeply personal creative journeys of six different artists. The exhibited works come together as a "room", in which text functions not merely as a tool for recording or depiction, but as performance; at the same time, the historical trajectory of images and the language of media are repeatedly evaluated and applied.
At once unique and reproducible, the works on show juggle with the realities of social interaction, which may be fractured, fragile, and rife with anxiety. This conversation expands upon the artists' processes of video filming and editing, expounding upon their artistic interventions that are oriented towards the unravelling of images.
This exhibition enters through observations and conversations toward that question, building the gallery into a sequence of fractured yet continuous "rooms." Six artists share the generative moments and boundaries of their practices. These pending rooms do not presuppose a "community"; instead, they are filled with unwritten "texts" in relation to the moving image. Each work appears as a "partial gesture," at once "subject" and "object," tracing trajectories rooted in specific contexts.
— Wang Jing
Cai Guo Jie
Working as a self-described "single soldier," Cai examines power boundaries within urban and territorial fissures. His works Vertical Land and Sea Route focus on the ecological and political consequences of "cross-boundary" disputes in Kinmen waters. By juxtaposing social realities with artistic interventions, his fragmented method resists closed narratives and proposes politics through discontinuity.
Xu Tan
Since 2020, Xu has researched social psychological symptoms of depression, using empathetic interviews and repeated dialogues as method. His latest trilogy of videos focuses on rural women's mental states, revealing how their "abnormal speech" signals urgent realities ignored by society.
Huang Chien-Hung
He is currently a professor and director of Graduate Institute of Trans-disciplinary Arts and, since 2019, the director of Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, at Taipei National University of the Arts. His research has focused on film studies, aesthetic theory, contemporary art thinking, philosophy, and curation.
Wang Jing
Recently, as an independent curator, she focuses on constructing exhibition frameworks that engage with social realities and lived experiences. She also initiated a series of discussions at the non-profit space "Top" in Guangzhou, exploring paradoxes in artistic and research practices to foster public interdisciplinary dialogue.
Images: Text in the Room, Deferred, gdm Taipei, 2026 (installation view). Photography by Anpis Wang.
Watch the full artist talk --
https://vimeo.com/1212250140/78ae5df3c8?fl=ip&fe=ec
