Chiu Wei-Hsiang

The interview visits Chiu’s studio and returns to his ancestral home in Dayuan, Taoyuan—nearly a ruin by that time. Demolition markings spread across the walls and through every room, as the traces of daily life are steadily pushed toward erasure. Moving between the place of making and the remnants of the house, the camera insists that “home” is not a backdrop, but an essential point of departure for Chiu’s painting.

Chiu reflects on childhood memories and speaks candidly about recent years: because of family responsibilities, he manages a care facility full-time during the day and can only paint at night. As the Taoyuan Aerotropolis project advances, he initiated two exhibition-as-action projects on the original site of the family home—House (2023) and Root (2024)—mounting ink works on xuan paper directly onto the emptied kitchen, living room, his grandfather’s office, the balcony, and the courtyard. Images of banquet gatherings, long wooden benches, portraits of his grandparents, and fruit are returned to the places where they once belonged.

His work is not only the images, but their bond with a specific site: people present, home present, memory present. With an almost childlike purity of vision, Chiu summons the afterimages of lived experience and brings into focus those presences society habitually overlooks. His practice is both the cultivation of personal memory and a reply to systemic neglect—becoming, on the eve of demolition, an unexpected collective ritual of farewell.