Department of Cultural Affairs

Widely regarded as one of the first thematic exhibitions in the world devoted to Object Theatre, this special exhibition is presented at the Puppetry Art Center of Taipei. 

Originating in France in the 1980s before expanding across Europe, Object Theatre explores the expressive and performative potential of everyday objects. This exhibition brings together Object Theatre artists from countries around the globe, including Taiwan, France, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, and Czechia. It offers audiences a chance to experience the original creative energy and imagination that shaped European Object Theatre while also tracing the evolution of object-based performance in Taiwan. Participating Taiwanese groups include Flying Group Theatre, which has worked extensively in object-based creation for many years and founded Close to You and the Yinalang Group, known for its contemporary object driven performance language. 

Responding to the idea of the object as both something seen and a carrier of memory, the exhibition also features a cross-media dialogue by artist Chung-li Kao, creating a thoughtful exchange between material, image, and memory.

As readymades, daily objects carry social and cultural traces and bear witness to the passage of time. On stage, an object need not imitate a human or animal form to come alive. It reveals its own presence and narrative potential through its material, weight, shape, and marks of use.

The exhibition title “Sńg mih-á” comes from the Taiwanese word “sńg,” meaning to play, and “mih-á,” meaning small objects. The name reflects how performers engage with objects in a playful manner, discovering their intrinsic qualities through observation, placement, and arrangement. Each gesture becomes a question posed to the object and a response received in return.

Since the early twentieth century, the concept of the readymade has steadily taken root in the visual arts. Beginning with Marcel Duchamp’s transformation of everyday objects into works of art, this idea later extended into movements such as Pop Art, Arte Povera, and conceptual art. Artists began to see objects not merely as tools, but as subjects capable of carrying ideas, structures, and meaning. These artistic developments also shaped theatrical practices in the latter half of the twentieth century. Around the 1980s, Object Theatre emerged as creators took familiar items from daily life and placed them on stage to be bearers of character, voice, and narrative significance. In this form, objects themselves became the central storyteller. Such work can feel direct and simple, yet it can also unfold as highly conceptual and aesthetically rigorous experimentation.

This exhibition seeks to explore the many possibilities and trajectories of Object Theatre. Rather than being confined to a single definition, the exhibition returns to the site of creation itself, beginning with the relationship between artist and material and examining how objects come to occupy the emotional and narrative core of a performance. 

The impulse to create often arises from an intuitive gaze between maker and object, a dialogue shaped by memory, experience, and feeling. Through this exchange, seemingly ordinary things take on renewed presence and expanded life. The exhibition also invites visitors to reconsider the objects that surround them. What we usually treat as simple props may instead become active agents on stage, shaping action and driving the storyline.

For many people, childhood play—arranging objects and inventing scenarios in pretend games—is an early foundation for understanding the world. Through imitation and role playing, children learn how to relate to others and their surroundings, gradually developing narrative awareness and a sense of relationships. Through imagination, projection, and storytelling, ordinary objects become vessels for emotion and meaning. In the space between object and memory, this exhibition encourages audiences to rediscover the possibilities embedded in everyday things, to see anew their connection to the world, and to embark on a personal journey of exploration, imagination, and discovery into the nature of the object itself.

▍“Sńg mih-á” Object Theatre Special Exhibition

Exhibition Dates｜Now through Sunday, June 28, 2026; closed Mondays

Venue｜Puppetry Art Center of Taipei

*Weekend Guided Tours: 2:30 pm to 3:00 pm

On site registration, no reservation required