Wu Mali, the 2016 winner of Taiwan’s National Award for Arts, has been invited by the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) to launch a major collaborative art initiative, “Hetero-topography.” Supported by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture, this community-engaged project was scheduled to run from November 14 to November 23, 2025. This marks the first-ever collaboration between the Taiwan Academy in Los Angeles and VAG, utilizing a spirit of communal co-creation to establish a platform for contemporary Taiwanese art and cultural values on Canadian soil.
Wu Mali is a celebrated figure in Taiwanese contemporary art. Since returning from Germany’s Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1985, she has been a driving force in socially-engaged art, reflecting on artistic knowledge systems and exploring the organic link between art and social politics. In recent years, she has dedicated her practice to community art, social issues, and environmental ecology. Her 2013 collaborative project with Bamboo Curtain Studio, “A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek,” which focused on the ecological and human history of a local creek, won the prestigious Taishin Arts Award and later earned her the National Award for Arts, making her the first woman to receive the award in the fine arts category.
The “Hetero-topography” project is co-curated by Sandy Hsiu-chih Lo, an independent curator from Taiwan, and VAG’s curator Lynn Chen. The initial phase of the project, taking inspiration from the concept of “From Stream to Table,” aims to connect community activists, ecological practitioners, holders of indigenous knowledge, and diverse immigrant cultural groups in Vancouver. Together, they will collectively rethink and re-narrate the relationship between people and the land amidst urban transformation and historical contexts. The project seeks to build a cross-regional, cross-linguistic, and cross-historical dialogue between Taiwan and Canada, linking environmental governance with cultural revitalization.
On November 22, VAG hosted a workshop - “Hetero-topography: Sharing Food, Stories & Belonging” to summarize Mali and Sandy's visit. More than 50 project participants were invited to exchange views on Vancouver's food culture and identity through a panel discussion. Wu Mali elaborated on her creative concepts and experiences in Taiwan. Henry Tsang, an artist and a faculty member of Emily Carr University of Art + Design, shared his food-art action project, which was inspired by the local 1907 anti-Asian riot. Trixie Ling, a Taiwanese-Canadian community activist who immigrated at age 5, described her social enterprise practice of empowering immigrant women through food. These actions rooted in the land will continue to develop into cross-sea dialogues, connections, and collaborative community co-creation through the intervention of art.
Mark Te-Yuan Chien, the Director of the Taiwan Academy in Los Angeles, commented that this pioneering collaboration, which integrates the local engagement of the artists and curators, has already garnered significant positive feedback from Canadian indigenous communities, academia, and the art scene. Taiwan and Canada share similar values, with a strong focus on environmental stewardship, ethnic diversity, and transitional justice. This ongoing project will develop organically through co-creation, and we plan to introduce more Taiwanese artists to Vancouver under this initiative, strengthening the partnership between the two nations on a cultural level.