A Blast of Lyricism: Contemporary Taiwanese Art in London

DURATION: 2025-10-30 ~ 2025-11-15
VENUE: Frieze No. 9 Cork Street (9 Cork St, London W1S 3LL)
ADDRESS: Frieze No. 9 Cork Street (9 Cork St, London W1S 3LL
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Founded in 2021 by Frieze, No. 9 Cork Street stands as a landmark exhibition space in London’s historic Mayfair, a district synonymous with modern and contemporary art since the 1920s. Under the directorship of Selvi May Akyildiz, the space, designed by the architectural studio Matheson Whiteley, hosts a year-round program of ambitious exhibitions and projects by leading international galleries. It has swiftly become one of the most influential platforms shaping London’s dialogue with global contemporary art.

In October 2025, A Blast of Lyricism: Contemporary Taiwanese Art in London marks a milestone collaboration between Tina Keng Gallery, one of Taiwan’s leading international galleries, and curator Professor Chia-Ling Yang of the University of Edinburgh, with generous support from Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture and its Taiwan Content Plan. Presented at Frieze No. 9 Cork Street, at the heart of London’s contemporary art scene, the exhibition unites several generations of Taiwanese artists to articulate a shared aesthetic that traverses local traditions and global dialogues.

Centred on the notion of lyricism, it conjures a contemplative and sensorial sphere where materiality, emotion, and philosophy converge. Within this cross-cultural encounter, the visitor is invited to trace the subtle exchange between East and West: the merging of gestures and ideas, the resonance of time and texture, the poetic tension between continuity and rupture. Through this constellation of practices, A Blast of Lyricism unveils a distinctly Taiwanese visual sensibility, one that bridges inheritance and experimentation, reflection and renewal.

Lyricism in art and literature has long conveyed personal and collective experience. In Taiwan, it evolved from a modernist import into a critical, place-based mode of expression. Postwar artists trained abroad absorbed Western lyrical abstraction and Abstract Expressionism, blending colour theories and gestural vocabularies with ink traditions and East Asian atmospheres. By the 1980s–90s, this sensibility engaged political history and collective memory, inflecting poetic brushwork with the weight of martial law, rural transformation, and questions of identity. Today, lyricism moves beyond romantic sentiment, becoming a space for material experimentation, sensory engagement, and the questioning of inherited aesthetic authority.

Featuring Ava Hsueh 薛保瑕 (b. 1956), Chiang Yomei 蔣友梅 (b. 1961), Chen Chun-Hao 陳浚豪 (b. 1971), Yao Jui-Chung 姚瑞中 (1969), Yang Chung-Ming 楊忠銘 (b. 1974), Su Meng-Hung 蘇孟鴻 (b. 1976), Chiu Chen-Hung 邱承宏 (b. 1983), Lee Juo-Mei 李若玫 (b. 1985), and He Yusen 何宇森 (b. 1995), the exhibition explores how lyricism transforms when native traditions meet external influences.

How does emotional depth take shape as an art of evocation, resonance, and cultural reference through the language of materials? How can fragmented narratives reveal diverse ideals and realities across multiple media?

The exhibition is organised into four thematic sections:

‧ Post-Republican Pseudo-Landscape (後民國偽山水)
Challenging conventional ink art and landscape traditions, artists reinterpret Sinophone heritage through contemporary sensibilities.

‧ Secret Realm of Things (物的秘境)
Artists explore the intersection of poetics and materiality, utilising everyday objects and organic forms to evoke memories and the subtle connections between things and human experience.

‧ Temperature of Feeling (情的溫度)
Transcending conventional storytelling, disrupted narratives, and open-ended compositions reflect on cultural translation and indigenous identities.

‧ All Conditioned Phenomena (有為法)
Meditative compositions evoke the cyclical nature of time, embodying continuous transformation and the fluidity of being.
As the first large-scale exhibition in the United Kingdom dedicated to contemporary Taiwanese art, A Blast of Lyricism introduces multicultural audiences to Taiwan’s evolving art discourse, one that resonates with reflection, critique, and transnational empathy. In essence, the exhibition demonstrates how Taiwanese artistic perspectives, within an increasingly multicentric art world, can serve as a vital locus where Eastern and Western aesthetics converge, forming a dynamic node within the fabric of global art history.

The exhibition extends beyond visual presentation into intellectual exchange. A series of artist conversations and academic forums, curated by Professor Yang, foster dialogue between Taiwanese artists and European scholars, illuminating shared inquiries into aesthetics, identity, and the politics of form.
Complementing these discourses, Deerland Tea will orchestrate an opening tea reception in collaboration with Taiwan’s celebrated tea and lifestyle brands, including Jioufen Teahouse, Sun Moon Lake Black Tea, Fortune Tea Garden, COFE, and MANO MANO, translating hospitality into a cultural expression that bridges art, ritual, and everyday sensibility.