Department of Cultural Affairs

The way human beings perceive and interpret mystical experiences and the spiritual world has never been fixed, but has evolved alongside the history of image technology. During the Renaissance, advances in convex and concave lens-making enabled the widespread adoption of linear perspective in painting. Within this new world of images, the illusion of three-dimensional space became increasingly convincing, allowing viewers to immerse themselves more fully in imagined scenes from mythology and the Bible.

Photography marked another major revolution in image technology, freezing a moment of worldly time into a permanent image of death, and it was even regarded as a mysterious technique capable of capturing or preserving the soul, which resonated with the Romantic era’s fascination with death, spirits, and the supernatural. Half a century later, the invention of moving images (cinema) gave humanity its first technology for creating, preserving, and sharing collective dreams. Its linear narrative structure strengthened how we envisioned the future, turning cinema into a powerful vehicle for the global expansion of capitalism. Commercial films not only offered working people a dreamlike escape after long hours of labor but also projected an idealized and standardized vision of a better future. By the end of the twentieth century, digital image processing—characterized by collage and editing techniques—had dismantled traditional linear storytelling, echoing postmodernism’s rejection of absolute truth and grand narratives. The corresponding development in mysticism was a shift toward more personal and diverse forms of spiritual exploration, alongside the rise of New Age spirituality.

In the twenty-first century, revolutionary advances in computing power have transformed technologies such as photogrammetry and AI image generation into the latest creative tools for image makers. “Membranes” have become a defining characteristic of this era’s image technologies. The digital material produced through 3D scanning and modeling is essentially a thin skin, the layers found in contemporary software such as Photoshop are likewise a kind of membrane, and AI-generated imagery behaves like pixels continually dispersing, converging, and recombining across a fluid membrane. These technological developments correspond closely to a mystical way of understanding the universe. For example, a wooden statue acquires sacred power not because of the wood itself, but because people project a sacred meaning onto it. Likewise, when a new generation of digital artists constructs lifelike virtual worlds by creating such “membranes”, practitioners of mysticism are similarly membrane-makers, laying down a spiritual membrane upon which spiritual work can take place.

Young Folks: The World as an Aesthetic Membrane brings together six emerging Taiwanese contemporary artists whose work explores how the transformation of image technologies in the twenty-first century amounts to new forms of spiritual inquiry and practice, ultimately recreating a mystical understanding of the universe. 

Jui-chien Hung makes a lot of resin casts. His work Messenger (信使) originated from an experience of deep meditation and uses layered materials to reveal the human condition as both biological and spiritual. Chrysalis Shrine (蛹物祠) reconstructs and recasts discarded objects collected from the environment, expressing emotional reflections on objects, life and death, and traces of the past. 

Ka-po Lai’s installation videos The Sacred and the Profane (聖凡之界) and The Rite of Trinity (三合之儀) use the ritual of tea offering and the symbolism of the Penrose Triangle to evoke the intricate, interdependent relationship between humanity, the divine, and the world, one that resists simple explanation. 

Yu-chen Huang’s The Invisible House draws upon the uniquely Taiwanese folk belief of the Yuanchen Palace (元辰宮), challenging the dualism of physical and spiritual worlds while opening new possibilities for imagining the inner self.

In Tzu-yu Huang’s game world N.A.G.H.A., the mythical serpent Naga becomes a metaphor for the immense computational power and rapid flow of information enabled by modern technology, while its discarded venomous skin is transformed into abandoned electronic hardware and tangled wires. This “membrane” of technological progress conceals the environmental costs and damage it creates. 

Po-hung Lien’s video work Cornucopia contrasts the use of 3D modeling in digital art with the ways people project emotions and empathy onto objects through religious and mystical practice, thereby endowing them with spirituality and sacred power. 

Through the physical vibrations of a trampoline, together with the echoes of sound and memory, Pei-chi Huang’s A Good-For-Nothing Haunted by Things reveals that the membrane connecting the material and spiritual worlds is, in essence, composed of energy frequencies vibrating across different dimensions.

▍ Young Folks: The World as an Aesthetic Membrane

Dates｜Saturday, May 23–Sunday, August 30 

Venue｜Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei

Curator｜Feng-yi Chu

Artists｜Jui-chien Hung, Yu-chen Huang, Pei-chi Huang, Tzu-yu Huang, Ka-po Lai, Po-hung Lien, Lê Bá