Department of Cultural Affairs

Set against the backdrop of disasters, war, personal crises, and the complexities of social rela-tionships, Safe Room is a space layered like strata, but fractured like tectonic plates—creating shifting boundaries between the self and others. 

Along these invisible lines, the exhibition constructs a temporary refuge from looming threats, a site of shelter continually reshaped by movement, displacement, and overlay. It is through this imagined “elsewhere” that Safe Room probes the blurred borders between protection and isolation, expanding our imagining of disaster itself.

Safety, always seems to imply a lurking danger. Taking the concept of disaster as a point of departure, Safe Room explores what catastrophe looks like from a Taiwan-centric perspective. From the lingering traces of authoritarian rule to the looming threats of war and frequent nat-ural calamities, a variety of forces disrupt our familiar routines and reshape how we relate to one another.

In the past three decades, Taiwan has endured earthquakes, typhoons, and political turmoil. This exhibition uses a series of artworks and narratives to respond to those threats. With con-tributions from seven artists based in Japan, Switzerland, and Taiwan, the exhibition offers a variety of perspectives on disaster, inviting the audience into a space that is both shelter and frontline. Along ever-shifting boundaries, it reflects on governance and individual agency in the face of crisis, and the unforeseen connections born from the diverse textures of disaster.

Ultimately, Safe Room reveals our precarious proximity to catastrophe. It urges us to position ourselves at the very edge of uncertainty, to adapt, respond, and perhaps even redefine the way we live and govern in an era shaped by constant threat.

Layered Landscapes and Accumulated Memory: Writing the Land through Natural Disaster

At MOCA Taipei’s outdoor plaza, visitors encounter Layer Upon Layer (一層層疊起) by Swiss artist Leonardo Bürgi Tenorio, a site-specific installation built around a Chinaberry tree that collapsed during Typhoon Kong-rey (2024). 

At the work’s core are earthen bricks crafted from local mud, sand, and clay, compressed and stacked during the artist’s field research across Taiwan. This co-creation between natural dis-aster and human intervention forms a walkable space, allowing viewers to physically trace the sedimented memories of the land.

In The Woodland Without Leaves, Yu-song Wang + Earthquake Sketching Group, comprising 21 creators from Hualien, respond to recurring natural disasters through on-site sketches and embodied observation. By repurposing driftwood from the coast into easels carried upstream for plein air painting, then leaving the easels behind—, the artists create a symbolic forest with no leaves, a poetic gesture that memorializes an ever-shifting environment.

Metaphors of Governance and Invisible Lines: Urban Structures and Political Borders

In Patching, Layers, and Overlays (補綴、夾層與覆蓋), Ya-wen Tang invites visitors to walk across a floor made of concrete, terrazzo, and asphalt. Accompanied by the sound of water flowing in pipes encircling the space, the installation peels back the urban surface to expose hidden infrastructures—barely noticeable, yet constantly evolving, imprints that shape our cities.

Hikaru Fujii’s The Classroom Divided by the Red Line (被紅線劃分的班級) draws on post-Fukushima discrimination in Japan. In the film, a teacher divides students into two groups, those “inside” and “outside” the radiation zone to create an irrational, discriminatory envi-ronment. As observers, the director, camera crew, and audience are all complicit, implicating the viewer in the mechanics of systemic bias.

Humor as Resistance: Psychological Warfare and the Threat of Invasion

Cheng-chun Chang presents two works: Private Second-Class R&D and Nice to See You. 

Drawing from Chang’s own experience as a conscript, Private Second-Class R&D proposes a “propaganda bomb” campaign that invites the public to donate foods to which the enemy would not have access during wartime, such as classic Taiwanese snacks or symbolic items from allied nations, to be turned into airborne tools of psychological warfare. This piece has a lighthearted tone and offers a layered reflection on the threats of invasion, democratic con-sensus, and national identity. 

In Nice to See You, a decommissioned firehose is bent so its two ends face each other to cre-ate a symbolic, anthropomorphic conversation between parts that would otherwise never meet. Giving voice to this long-silent, high-pressure object hidden within architecture, Chang high-lights the unseen forces that protect us every day. Nice to See You was created in collabora-tion with Chia-lun Chang and Chin-min Ho of the popular podcast Taiwan’s No.1 Commut-ing Brand.

Chen-wei Chang’s Volkswagen Transporter T5.gltf centers on a 3D-modeled reconstruction of a bombed civilian vehicle, originally created by a graduate of Kyiv National University during the Ukraine–Russia war. Chang used digital imagery and printed canvas collage to re-assemble the ruined car, transforming visual trauma into a powerful testament. The piece con-nects distant events to our own lived realities, underlining how the detritus of war ripples out far beyond its epicenter.