Date: Saturday, June 21, 2025 | 14:30–16:00
Venue: Auditorium, Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Moderator: Eva Lin | Independent Curator
Speakers: Olafur Eliasson | Artist
Mali Wu | Artist
Introduction
Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey reflects on the three-decade long career of Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. Featuring 17 works that span installation, painting, sculpture, and photography, the exhibition brings Eliasson's artistic practice to the Asia-Pacific region.
The concept of "journey" extends beyond the physical movement of visitors and artworks; it also represents a process of thought and exploration. Eliasson engages with natural elements, light, color, and movement to heighten our awareness of our surroundings. His works are not static objects, but dynamic entities that are activated only through the viewer's participation – encouraging us to reconsider conventional ways of seeing and to create shared experiences within space. The exhibition invites visitors to engage with the unseen aspects of everyday life, fostering new perspectives on the self, the museum, and the world.
This talk features a conversation between artists Olafur Eliasson and Mali Wu, moderated by independent curator Eva Lin, and preceded by an exhibition briefing from San Shiung, Head of Education and Public Services at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. The discussion will explore how artistic practice can engage audiences with environmental awareness and sustainability, fostering a profound cross-cultural dialogue informed by the artists’ diverse backgrounds and creative approaches. Co-sponsored by the Museum Friends Association and the Wenxin Arts Foundation, the event invites the audience on a curious journey through contemporary art from multiple perspectives.
Note
Online Registration: Opens at 10:00 on Wednesday, June 11. Registered attendees receive priority check-in and entry.
Admission: Check-in on Saturday, June 21, from 14:00 to 14:30. Seats are not reserved for late arrivals. Entry closes at 14:50.
Interpretation: Simultaneous Mandarin-English interpretation is provided. Please present a valid ID at check-in to borrow devices. Limited availability; early arrival recommended.
Venue Rules: Recording and eating or drinking inside the auditorium are prohibited without permission.
Media Use: The event will be recorded. Attendance indicates consent for the non-commercial use of recordings.
Entry Requirements: Tickets must be purchased prior to entry. Please follow TFAM’s admission and visitation policies.
Updates: Any changes will be announced on the official website.
About the Moderator
Eva Lin
Eva Lin is an independent curator known for off-site curatorial projects at unconventional venues such as abandoned paper factory, military bunker, temples, historic mines, indigenous community in the mountains and working closely with local communities and people from different fields to engage in experiments that constitute her interdisciplinary practice. Lin’s dynamic interests drive her into alternative thinking and response to cultural production in diverse forms in order to extend the agency and force of art. Her recent curatorial projects include Jogja Biennale (2025), Sleepless in Stone (2024), You and I live on the different planets Centre Pompidou-Metz (2022 co-curator Bruno Latour and Martin Guinard-Terrin) , Taipei Biennial 2020-21 public program curator, Matsu Biennial 2022 – Underground Matters, the 7th Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition – ANIMA, Ryoji Ikeda Solo Exhibition (2019 Taipei Fine Art Museum), The Hidden South (2018, Taitung), The Upcoming Past (2019), Parallax: Damage Control (2017 Chung-Hsing Paper Factory, Yilan), and She is now the art director of mt.project.
About the Speaker
Olafur Eliasson
The works of Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967) explore the relevance of art in the world at large. Since 1997, his wide-ranging solo shows – featuring installations, paintings, sculptures, photography, and film – have appeared in major museums around the globe.
Eliasson is internationally-renowned for his exhibitions and public installations that challenge the way we perceive and co-create our environments. In 2003, he made 'The weather project', a glowing indoor sun shrouded in mist at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall in London. In 2008, Eliasson constructed four expansive artificial waterfalls along the Manhattan and Brooklyn shorelines for 'The New York City Waterfalls'. He has also explored art's potential to address climate change: for 'Ice Watch', he brought large blocks of free-floating glacial ice to the city centres of Copenhagen, Paris, and London. Passers-by could touch fragments of the Greenlandic glacial ice and witness its fragility as it disappeared before them. On the occasion of the 2020 German Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Eliasson created 'Earth Speakr' together with children around the world and support from the German Federal Foreign Office; the global artwork invites kids to speak up for the planet.
In 2012, Eliasson founded the social business Little Sun and contributed to its growth until 2024. In 2019, Eliasson was named UNDP Goodwill Ambassador for climate action.
Located in Berlin, Studio Olafur Eliasson comprises a large team of craftspeople, architects, archivists, researchers, administrators, cooks, art historians, and specialised technicians.
Mali Wu
Born in Taipei, Taiwan, graduated from Düsseldorf Art Academy, Germany in 1985, Mali Wu is an artist and Emeritus professor of Graduate Institute of Transdisciplinary Art, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan.
Committing herself to the conceptual and performative art, Wu tends to associate her works with historical, political and social issues. In 1995, Taiwan participated in Venice Biennale for the first time, she was one of the artists represented. From 2000 on she has extended her artistic praxis to touch upon ecological awareness and socially engaged art.
Over a thirty-year long career she has developed numerous projects. Her work has been included in biennials such as Singapore Biennale (2022), Taipei Biennial (2008, 1998), and the 3rd Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (1999), etc. Her most recent solo show, Dáng Wu Mali took place in Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in 2023.
Wu received Taiwan’s National Award for Arts in 2016, and co-curated the Taipei Biennial 2018. 2022 she was awarded Bellagio Center fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation.