Prioritizing identity, migration and sustainability.
This week we welcome Tzu-Ying (Naomi) Chan, an independent curator, artist, educator and writer based in New York who is originally from New Taipei City in Taiwan. Her practice spans curatorial work and artistic production and is grounded in a deep attentiveness to people, land and the environment. In her curation, she prioritizes artists whose work engages with identity, migration and sustainability and collaborates closely to shape exhibitions that reflect individual visions while contributing to broader narratives of representation and meaning.Chan is dedicated to making art accessible to all, and her work reflects a deep commitment to fostering inclusivity, cross-cultural understanding and the educational power of art within diverse communities.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in the plastic arts from Da-Yeh University in Taiwan and a master’s degree in curatorial practice from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her 2023 project, “New Island,” was a collective installation that explored the relationship between traditional Taiwanese tea culture and mountainous landscapes. The project invited audiences to reconsider the material and symbolic connections between mountain formation and ceramic making.
han incorporated ore as an unconventional material within the ceramic process. Taiwan’s tea culture embodies both sensory and visual experience, while its mountainous terrain, home to 4,598 named peaks, including Yushan, shapes cultural identity.
New Island brings these elements together through a digital print and ceramic forms. Extending into imagined landscapes, Chan constructs fictional islands as emotional terrains, reflecting on belonging, distance and the unknown.
