Chang En-Man © courtesy of the Artist
Chang En-Man (1967–)
Chang En-Man is one of the few contemporary Taiwanese artists to have sustained a long-term research practice grounded in Indigenous perspectives. Employing manual labour as a method, she returns oral memories fixed by writing and Indigenous experiences fragmented by institutional systems to the body and the land. Her practice emerges from a specific historical condition: many of the earliest comprehensive records of the legends, rituals, and everyday knowledge of Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples were not written by community members themselves, but documented during the colonial period by outside researchers using the languages and classificatory systems of the Other. These documents are at once some of the few surviving clues and a framework that must be dismantled.
Her choice of materials is itself a statement. Within Indigenous communities, techniques such as embroidery and weaving originally belonged to the realm of everyday labour—who performed them, on what occasions, and which patterns were made were all embedded within the order of daily life, rather than presented under the name of “art.” By introducing these techniques into the field of contemporary art, Chang alters not only the medium but also the way time is valued. A single work may require months to complete, yet no more efficient technique could take its place, because slowness is precisely what the work seeks to articulate.
Her choice of materials also transforms the ownership of narrative. Confronted with community records written in foreign languages and classificatory systems, Chang neither rejects them entirely nor reproduces them unchanged. Instead, she returns the written word to the body—needle and thread replace brush and ink, while patterns replace syntax. What she truly addresses is the condition following rupture: how memory, after being misread and interrupted, may continue to be transmitted in another form.
A consistent set of questions runs throughout her practice: Who has the right to write history, and whose language determines the form that memory takes? The Great Deluge: Oral History from Pacavalj gives these questions concrete form. The work draws upon a Pacavalj Paiwan origin myth of a great flood, recorded in a colonial document from 1935. Using reverse-stitch embroidery, Chang retraces this oral memory—once fixed in the language of the Other—across nine metres of cotton cloth. Romanised text is interwoven with characters that are difficult to decipher, frequently preventing viewers from “understanding” what they read. Yet this impediment is not a shortcoming; it precisely reflects the historical condition Indigenous peoples have long confronted when encountering histories written about them by others.
For this reason, Chang’s work generates a high degree of resonance in international contexts. What she addresses is not an experience unique to Taiwan, but a shared condition among societies that have been named and classified by external systems of knowledge. When exhibited in Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Americas, her works often enter into direct dialogue with local Indigenous peoples, migrant communities, and postcolonial discourse.
Born in Taitung, Taiwan, Chang is of Paiwan heritage and has long travelled between Indigenous communities and urban centres to conduct artistic and field research. At a time when Indigenous issues in Taiwan have largely been framed in terms of cultural preservation or identity politics, she uses the language of contemporary art to reframe them as broader questions concerning historical authorship, ecological politics, and the power structures of knowledge.
In 2022, Chang was invited to participate in documenta fifteen, one of the most significant international presentations by a Taiwanese artist in recent years. Her other major exhibitions include the Istanbul Biennial, Kathmandu Triennale, Singapore Biennale, Cosmopolis #2 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Museum MACAN in Jakarta, Ludwig Museum in Budapest, and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, USA.
｜Collections｜
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, USA
Tainan Art Museum, Tainan, Taiwan
Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan
Taitung Art Museum, Taitung, Taiwan
｜Solo Exhibitions｜
2025, Mapping Snail, Nunu Fine Art New York | Project Space, New York, USA
2017, As Heavy as a Feather, Taiwan Academy, Los Angeles, USA
2016, As Heavy as a Feather, Centre A, Vancouver, Canada
2013, Chang En-Man | Snail Paradise, Open Contemporary Art Center, Taipei, Taiwan
2011, A Hut: Presentation of Works by Chang En-Man, A Hut, Taitung, Taiwan
2009, Exhibiting a Room: Chang En-Man / Year-End Cleaning Project, Open Contemporary Art Center, New Taipei City, Taiwan
｜Group Exhibitions｜
2026
Rememory: The 25th Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales and other venues, Sydney, Australia
Tidal Weavers: Floating Encounters, Hong-gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
Breaking Ground: Art and Activism in Indigenous Taiwan, Ministry of Culture Gallery, New Taipei City, Taiwan
2025
Taiwan at the Breaking Point: Frontlines of the Past and Future, Ludwig Museum—Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest, Hungary
Breaking Ground: Art and Activism in Indigenous Taiwan, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, USA
Tidal Weavers: Islands Exchange, CHAT—Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile, Hong Kong
Drifting Station—An Interstellar Polyphonic Opera of Praise and Mourning, ARKO Art Center, Seoul, South Korea
Sounds of Babel, Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab, Taipei, Taiwan
Drifting Feast, das weisse haus, Vienna, Austria
2024
Forest, River and Ocean Arts Festival—Connecting, Hualien, Taiwan
Walker, Sea Monsters, Cannon Fire, and Them: 400 Years of Fort Zeelandia, Tainan Art Museum, Tainan, Taiwan
2023
Voice Against Reason, Museum MACAN, Jakarta, Indonesia
The Oceans and the Interpreters, touring exhibition, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria
Taiwan International Austronesian Art Triennial: RamiS—Tracing Origins, Taiwan Indigenous Culture Park, Pingtung, Taiwan
Whose Memory? Whose Identity?, You Chang Museum of Arts, New Taipei City, Taiwan
Green Island Human Rights Art Festival: Listening to the Echoes of the Cracks, White Terror Green Island Memorial Park, Taitung, Taiwan
2022
The Oceans and the Interpreters, Hong-gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
documenta fifteen, Kassel, Germany
Kathmandu Triennale 2077, Taragaon Museum, Kathmandu, Nepal
Another Plate, Taitung Art Museum, Taitung, Taiwan
2021
Pan-Austro-Nesian Arts Festival, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
The Distance between Us and the Future, Taiwan Indigenous Culture Park, Pingtung, Taiwan
The Body as a Tribe—Contemporary Indigenous Art Rooted in Mobility, Luodong Cultural Working House, Yilan, Taiwan
2020
The Secret South: Cold War Perspectives and the Global South in the Museum Collection, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
Green Island Human Rights Art Festival: If, on the Margin, We Draw a Coordinate, White Terror Green Island Memorial Park, Taitung, Taiwan
Garden of Six Seasons, Para Site, Hong Kong
2019
Singapore Biennale: Every Step in the Right Direction, Singapore
Cosmopolis #2: Rethinking the Human, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
The 16th Istanbul Biennial: The Seventh Continent, Istanbul, Türkiye
2018
Wild Rhizome—2018 Taiwan Biennial, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan
2017
South: An Art of Asking and Listening, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Critical Scenery—Indigenous Culture and Spatial Deployment, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan
2016
Touching the Present—Contemporary Art from Taiwan and Southeast Asia, MONA Inner Spaces, Poznań, Poland
2015
2015 Keywords: Wild Tales, Juming Museum, New Taipei City, Taiwan
The Testimony of Food: Ideas and Food, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
These Stories Began before We Arrived, Silo 6, Auckland, New Zealand
2014
2014 Taipei Biennial: The Great Acceleration, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
Yes, Taiwan—2014 Taiwan Biennial, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan
2012
The Scale of Understanding: Taiwan–Thailand Contemporary Art Exchange Exhibition, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Bangkok, Thailand
2026.09.12 – 2027.08.29