Taipei Fine Arts Museum Unveils 2026 Highlights

Following the remarkable success in 2025, which saw the highest museum attendance in nearly a decade, with over one million visitors, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) has officially announced its 2026 highlights. With two major international collaborative exhibitions and diverse curatorial perspectives, TFAM plans to guide visitors through art’s infinite possibilities.

The highly anticipated international exhibition, Ryuichi Sakamoto | seeing sound, hearing time, is a retrospective of the late composer’s groundbreaking practice, highlighting how he blurred the lines between sound, image, and technology, while featuring his long-term collaborations with artists such as Shiro Takatani, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Daito Manabe. The exhibition will focus on transforming music into a stereoscopic experience within spaces that can be both “seen” and “perceived.”

Another key focus is Surrealism: Worlds in Dialogue, which will examine the historical context of Surrealism and its profound impact on later generations of artists. The exhibition features prominent figures, including René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, and Man Ray, and fosters dialogue and resonance with contemporary artists such as Cindy Sherman and David Lynch.

In addition, the Taiwan Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale, curated by Raphael Fonseca, will feature artist Li Yi-Fan as Taiwan’s representative. The exhibition, titled Screen Melancholy, explores image-generation technologies and improvisational narratives, challenging conventional viewing habits. At TFAM, there will also be thematic exhibitions, including Material World (working title), Entanglement: The Rhythm of Being, and Wang Yahui: A Retrospective (working title). Meanwhile, we invite you to stay tuned to the 14th Taipei Biennial, which is currently on view and will run until March 29.

• 2026/01/05｜News｜2026 Library and Archive visit notes

2025 Taipei Biennial "Whispers on the Horizon" 2025/11/01 - 2026/03/29 Gallery 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, D, E, F (1F, 2F, BF) The Taipei Biennial 2025, Whispers on the Horizon, curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, will open on November 1 at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and run through March 29, 2026. Inspired by Taiwan's layered and interwoven histories and creative trajectories the curators have proposed the central theme of yearning. Through this subtle, yet profound, and universal sentiment, the exhibition gathers artworks that transcend borders, eras, and languages, launching a journey that traces the past, transforms the present, and shifts toward the future. Whispers on the Horizon encompasses works that embody "yearning" in diverse forms—including painting, video, performance, sculpture, and immersive environments. "The Biennial does not resolve yearning," the curators state. Beyond being a site of memory or loss, "It offers not closure but capacity," inviting audiences "to stay with incompletion, to move toward one another, to keep faith with the unfinished future that calls us." Amid an increasingly "fractured" global landscape, these artistic practices intertwine and resonate, reminding us that the work of art is not only to represent but also to convene: "If power organizes forgetting, then art can organize memory; if power isolates, then art can assemble; if power shouts, then art can teach us to hear the whisper beneath the noise."

2025 Taipei Art Awards 2025/12/13 - 2026/04/26 Gallery 3A, 3B The“Taipei Art Awards”is one of Taiwan’s most forward-looking and indicative visual art awards. Established in 1983, the Awards are held annually to encourage the creation in tune with the spirit of the times and introduce a more diversified array of artistic ideas and creative energy. As such, over the past four decades, the Taipei Art Awards has borne witness to the development of contemporary art in Taiwan. This year, the 2025 Taipei Art Awards will present 10 finalists’ remarkable and unique works: Wang Guan-Jhen, Co-coism (Hung Chien-Han, Chang Kang-Hua), Chen Yen-Chi, Chen Kuang-Jui, Sun Pei-Mao, Shiu Jui-Tsz, Hsieh Chi-Hsun, Hsieh Jung-Wei, Su Jui-Hao, Ku Kuang-Yi.

Whispers of Traces 2025/09/27 - 2026/2/22 Children's Art Education Center In our everyday lives, we leave all kinds of traces behind, such as unfolded blankets or stains left on clothes. These seemingly tiny marks are like whispers of memories and emotions, quietly telling stories of the past. "Whispers of Traces" invites children to experience traces in different forms through observation, games, and creation. The exhibition features artists Hsiao Yuchi, Liu Shu-Yu, and Delphine Pouillé. Five works are displayed, and two are commissioned specifically for this exhibition. Through personification and storytelling, the name of the exhibition transforms abstract concept into concrete experience. The word "whisper" hints at softspoken secrets and hidden clues, inspiring curiosity to explore. Traces can be concrete footprints and marks, or lost fragments that only exist in memories. The exhibition asks the audience: Do traces exist only in physical spaces, or can they also quietly linger in the heart?

TFAM Net.Open: Vanishing Acts 2025/09/19 - 2026/08/31 Online Exhibition Launched in 2024, the "TFAM Net.Open" initiative focuses on the convergence of digital technology and art, promoting the diverse exchange of creative methods and technologies while reaching a wider audience through a project-based platform. For the 2025 offline project, artist Hsu Chia-Wei collaborated with teams specializing in underwater archaeology, underwater acoustics, and virtual technology to create the multi-person virtual reality experience, The Sound of Sinking. Through a digital avatar, the audience is invited to a virtual setting for an underwater journey from south to north, exploring historical memories submerged beneath the waves. The online exhibition Vanishing Acts is curated by Mexican curator Doreen A. Rios and features new works commissioned from Mexican artist Federico Pérez Villoro, Taiwanese artist Hsu Jung, British artist Anna Ridler, and Russian artist Olia Lialina that explores the will explore the trend and phenomenon of digital and internet age while reflecting on its weight, traces, absence, and fragility.

Taipei Art Awards 2025 (CF)

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MODERN ART No.216

This issue of Modern Art is a special feature on “Taipei Biennial 2025” and aims to translate the perceptual experiences inspired by the exhibition and the discussions from the opening forum into an in-depth, meaningful textual space. The special feature fosters dialogue at three levels: First, the forum moderators, including Keng Yi-Wei, Liu Wen, and Roan Ching-Yueh, are invited to expand the panel discussions by exploring theater, affect, geopolitics, and scales of observation, collectively highlighting contemporary curating’s focus on micropolitics and perceptual practices. Subsequently, Su Chia-Ying, Chen Yen-Ling, and Hsu Shih-Yu examine the exhibition’s “objects—space—curtains” arrangement and immersive experiences to analyze how art shapes the audience’s perceptions and sense of presence. The “Artist Interviews” section offers a behind-the-scenes look at the exhibition, highlighting the creative journeys of five artists—Ciou Zih-Yan, Hiraki Sawa, Henrique Oliveira, Wang Yao-Yi, and Wang Hsiang-Ling—and showing how they engage in conversations about history, memory, and space.