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Taiwanese American Arts Council
House 17, Nolan Park, Governors Island, New York City
Season Finale 🌿
2026 Island Reverence-II
Thematic Exhibitions
📅 September 19 – November 1, 2026
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Participating Artists
ChrisTina Andersen • Chia-Wei Chang • Chih-Hui Chuang • Eun Young Choi
• Andrea Coronil • Yuyu Demi Chen • Nina Edwards • Chung-Ying Hou
• Hsiao-Chu Hsia (Julia) • Ming-Jer Kuo • Nikolina Kovalenko • Kyunglim Lee
• Yi-Chi Lin • Mike Lin • Wildriana Paulino • I-Chin Sung • Jeremiah Teipen
• Sarah Walko • Ricardo Woo • Chin-Chih Yang
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TAAC House 17 welcomes the final season of Island Reverence: Art, Ecology, and Community on Governors Island. Bringing together artists, open studios, installations, performances, and community programs, this final chapter celebrates our shared connections to art, nature, and one another.
Join us as we bring the 2026 season to a meaningful close!
image(L) Sarah Walko, Shore and Shields, Hand to Hand, Land to Land, 2026. (Sittingg in the woods among the rootlets and stones, we each placed one in our pockets and a few of us began to weep, But weep is too musical a word.) mixed media sculpture
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Ming-Jer Kuo
Memento Mori: Starry Night from Six Feet Under
Presents two site-specific installations by Ming-Jer Kuo: Urban Constellations, from his ongoing Cemetery Series, and Backtracking the Unseen, created from his archive of smartphone photographs. Together, the works explore mortality, memory, and the traces we leave behind.
In Urban Constellations, aerial images of nineteen New York City cemeteries transform tombstones into luminous points resembling constellations, creating a poetic view of a “starry night from six feet under.” In Backtracking the Unseen, hundreds of sky photographs taken since 2016 become a suspended, chandelier-like installation.
Moving between earth and sky, physical and digital memory, the works consider how unseen traces of our lives continue to remain present.
(images: Top page, above & left bottom)
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Nikolina Kovalenko
Barocco Reefscape, 2022. Oil on canvas, 54×80 in.
Barocco Reefscape immerses viewers in a dreamlike coral reef, where luminous colors and organic forms evoke the richness of underwater life while drawing attention to the growing fragility of coral ecosystems.
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📅 Saturday, October 10
open house. open studios. workshop. performance
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🌳THE TREE OF LIFE 🌳
Painting Workshop led by artist
Nikolina Kovalenko
1:00–2:30 PM
| The Tree of Life is a universal symbol of growth, renewal, and the interconnectedness of all life. In this painting workshop, participants will create their own Tree of Life, inspired by their personal connection to nature, and imagination. | | |
Pending Paused
Interactive Performance
by Hsiao-Chu (Julia) Hsia
3:30-4:00pm
| | Sarah Walko, Shores and Shields, Hand to Hand, Land to Land, 2026 (It appeared there was almost nothing left, but then you learned over and whispered to me that every forest begins with something small enough to git inside a human palm.) | | |
Leon Chuang, The Shape of Home, 2026
Lightbox and video
A flock of Canada geese in seasonal migration reflects on home, belonging, displacement, and the continual search for a place to settle.
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Julia Hsia 夏小筑
Pending Pause, 2026
2-min looping video
Site specific installation, jute twine, fabric, monitor
Pending Pause explores imposed borders and the human need to mark possession, control resources, and restrict access. The installation creates an illusion of access while placing a barrier before the viewer, recalling fences around private or restricted spaces. Yet nature resists such boundaries, connecting the world through movement.
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Christina Andersen
Hope Takes Flight, 2026
Dead wood, bronze, paint, wax, resin, water, tree branch from Governors Island. 12.5’ (H) × 6.5’ (W) × 4.5’ (D)
Inspired by Andersen’s experience caring for an injured hummingbird until it could fly again, Hope Takes Flight reflects on hope as something fragile that requires care and protection. The work especially honors the importance of nurturing children’s hope until it is strong enough to take flight.
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Chung-Ying Hou 侯忠頴
Botanical Thinking
《草木有思》, 2026
Site-specific installation
Handmade paper incorporating natural materials, including plant fibers, leaves, bark, and soil; produced through the artist's complete papermaking process.
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Jeremiah Teipen,
Always Controlled by What We Control
An interactive installation exploring how digital systems shape perception, behavior, and beliefs. Placing participants in a hybrid physical/virtual space, the work questions how technologies such as algorithmic prediction are reshaping our experience and understanding of reality.
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Chin-Chih Yang, Carry Water, performance during Climate Week NYC,
Governors Island, September 25, 2026.
| | Forest Resonance by Chih-Hui Chuang, was created from the trunk of a dried oak tree from Crystal Park. The tree - given a second life through art - as sculpture evokes the spirit of the forest and the healing energy of nature. Now on view at TAAC House 17, Nolan Park, Governors Island, NYC | | |
Chin-Chih Yang, Untitled (Site-Specific Porch Installation), 2026
Mixed media: air tubing, lights, branches, and recycled materials
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Ricardo Woo
AMIGOS E AMIGAS, 2026
Live portraiture and performative drawing
“The earth is what we all have in common.”
Amigos e Amigas celebrates friendship and human connection through live portraiture. Each encounter becomes part of a collective portrait, bringing strangers together through a shared place and moment.
The evolving portraits reflect the diversity of people who pass through Governors Island, turning individual encounters into a growing image of community.
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YuYu Demi Chen, 陳又瑜
Metamorphosis of Two Islands, 2026
Site-specific installation
YuYu Chen transfers photographs of Taiwanese temple rituals onto fallen tree bark collected from Governors Island, connecting the physical traces of one island with the cultural memory of another.
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Chia-Wei Chang, 張家瑋 2025-2026
Atayal Girl 泰雅族少女
72 x 48 in, oil on canvas
Atayal Girl brings together human life, animals, nature, and ancestry. The skeletal remains evoke traditional Atayal practices of burying the deceased beneath or near the home, suggesting an enduring connection between ancestors, the living, and the land.
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Nina Edwards
Taiwan LV Bag: A journey to Liberty, 2026. Digital mixed media on canvas, 8.5 x11 in. Woven Across Time series
Dialogue in Tiles brings together the visual traditions of 17th-century Dutch Delft Blue and Taiwanese floral tiles, reflecting centuries of cultural exchange between East and West. Through digital illustration, doves, butterflies, flowers, and the qipao become symbols of migration, transformation, and cultural memory. The female figure embodies both beauty and resilience, while the merging tile patterns create a new visual language of shared heritage and identity.
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Saturday October 17
at House 17, Nolan Park
- 2-6pm Live Portraits by artists
Chia-Wei Chang & Mike Lin & Artist Market at Six Coast Restaurant — Near the Ferry Dock. — Prints, crafts & small artworks available for purchase.
Saturday-Sunday October 24–25
🎃 Pumpkin Point Weekend
- Trick or Treat, pick up your own pumpkin
Saturday October 31 2:00pm
🎶 Kaju Roberto & Andy Lin
“My Icarus Wings" Duet Music Performance & Season Closing Reception
Join us at TAAC House 17 on Governors Island as we celebrate the final month of our 2026 season!
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Kyunglim Lee
Reverence: Seven Sayings, 2025
Collage paper mounted on wood panels, dimensions variable
Lee translates the Last Seven Words of Jesus on the Cross into abstract visual forms, reflecting themes of love, justice, forgiveness, anguish, and redemption. Like composers who interpreted these sacred words through music, Lee expresses them through collage, material, and her own visual language.
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Lin Yi-Chi 林羿绮
+12 / −12, 2026.
Clock, transparency film print
Two clocks with inverted faces are placed side by side, connected by the image of the sea.
New York and Taipei are twelve hours apart: the numbers on the clocks are the same, yet one marks daylight while the other marks night. The same time, at opposite ends of the sea, becomes two opposing moments of a day.
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Eun Young Choi, 2026,
Untitled (UW #1, #2, #3, #4), 2019.
Hand cut vinyl, silver mylar on board,
20 x 20 inches.
Choi works with reflective Mylar and cut floral patterns to create layered surfaces in which light, space, and the viewer’s own reflection become part of the work.
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TAAC on Governors Island, NYC
台美文藝協會
從島嶼到島嶼：
藝術、生態與文化交流
2026 House 17 Documentary film produce by ToIsland Production 透島影業
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TAAC 2026 Governors Island Documentary
4K two-channel video, color, sound, 8 min.
Beginning on Governors Island, this documentary traces TAAC’s 2026 Island Reverence: Art, Ecology, and Community program at House 17 through interviews with TAAC co-founders and board members, the chief curator, and participating House 17 artists.
Through the voices of artists and the TAAC community, the documentary captures House 17 as a meeting place where art, people, and island experiences come together.
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Artist in residence
Studio Artists
September to October
Studio 1: Chia-Wei Chang & Mike Lin
Studio 2: Wildriana Paulino
Studio 3: Yu-Yu Demi Chen & ChrisTina Andersen
Studio 4: Nikolina Kovalenko
Studio 5: Kyunglim Lee & Eun Young Choi
Take this opportunity to meet the artists, learn about their creative processes, and gain insight into the concepts behind their work. When you visit House 17, be sure to explore the second-floor studios and engage in conversation with the artists. We look forward to welcoming you!
Open Studio, Saturday and Sunday 11 AM–5 PM, or by appointment
TAAC House 17, Nolan Park, Governors Island
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Studio 2:
Wildriana Paulino
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Studio 4:
Nikolina Kovalenko
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Studio 3:
Yu-Yu Demi Chen
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Studio 3:
ChriTina Andersen
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TAAC: 10 Years and Counting
A Journey Through Art
— Book Release
As this publication reflects upon ten years of exhibitions, residencies, institutional partnerships, and community engagement, it also situates TAAC within broader shifts in the art environments of both Taiwan and New York. Through the curatorial journey and career transitions of Luchia Meihua Lee—from museum leadership and cultural diplomacy to the founding of TAAC—the book traces the evolving networks, artistic movements, and diasporic flows that have shaped Taiwanese, Asian, and Chinese art communities across transnational contexts.
Extending back to the artistic climate of the 1970s and moving toward TAAC’s establishment in 2014 and its continued development, TAAC：10 Years and Counting documents not only programs and milestones, but also the changing cultural geography of contemporary art. It observes how Taiwanese art has evolved within Taiwan’s own shifting social and institutional landscape, while simultaneously examining its dialogue with New York’s multicultural art scene and the broader global discourse.
More than an anniversary record, this volume serves as both archive and reference— a resource for scholars, artists, and readers seeking deeper understanding of Taiwanese and Taiwanese American art communities, their diasporic trajectories, and their contributions to contemporary art history.
For inquiries or to reserve a copy, please contact info@taac-us.org.
The cover features Watch Us! Together We Can Do It by Taiwanese American artist Chin-Chih Yang.
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Support TAAC and Help Build the Future of Arts and Culture
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