Art in Action on the Pearl Coast

The 2026 Taoyuan Land Art Festival presents 72 works by artists from 13 countries, strung like pearls along 35 kilometers of the city’s coastline. Set against sea and sky, these installations are more than photo and check-in opportunities: Together, they invite visitors to look anew at this piece of land and reflect on how people, nature, and the ocean can coexist.

The artworks at the 2026 Taoyuan Land Art Festival decorate the shoreline while telling local stories.

Renaissance: The Light Gatherers by Chiu Chiehsen and Margaret Guillemot

Art returns to the land

Unlike works displayed in the white cube of a museum, land art is concerned with its connections to landscape, culture, and ecology. As Chiu Cheng-sheng, director of the Taoyuan City Department of Cultural Affairs, explains, artists create works that are deeply bound to the places where they stand.

Land art strengthens the connection between artwork and place. Here, iron sculpture recreates the collective labor of traditional beach-seine fishing.

Fruition of Legacy by Cheng Yang-cheng, Liu Wei-ying, and Chiu Hung-cheng (Taiwan)

 

Taoyuan’s coastline is a favorite birdwatching destination and a stop along the migration route of the little tern, a Category II protected species in Taiwan. Installed at Zhuwei Fishing Port, this work symbolizes parental guardianship and the inter-generational continuation of life.

Embrace Little Terns by Pasulange Druluan (Taiwan)

After 12 previous editions, the 2026 festival is the first exhibition staged under the new biennial model. The longer planning and creative interval allowed the curatorial team to conduct deeper field research and gave artists from Taiwan and abroad more time in residence to understand local culture firsthand. Chiu Cheng-sheng says by way of an example that Japanese artist Nobuyuki Sugihara spent more than three months in the rural Xinwu District learning stone fish-weir construction techniques from residents. In Woven Stones, Roots of the Sea, Embrace of the Sea, he treats stone as something to be interknit, transforming a local construction practice into artistic language.

Woven Stones, Roots of the Sea, Embrace of the Sea by Nobuyuki Sugihara (Japan)

The exhibition period has also been extended to nearly two months, giving visitors ample time to engage with the works, appreciate in detail the ideas behind them, and linger by the sea.

Next to an algal reef at Yong’an Fishing Port, a white openwork sculpture of breaking waves resembles a pair of wings. Its appearance shifts with the light from dawn to dusk, making it a popular place to stop, check in, and take photographs.

Waves of Grace by Yang Shih-yi (Taiwan)

The coast is never just a backdrop

When discussing land art, neighboring Japan offers the two most prominent examples in Asia: the Setouchi Triennale and the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale. Eric Chen, a professor of architecture at Chung Yuan Christian University and project director of the 2026 Taoyuan Land Art Festival, contrasts the context of those events with Taoyuan’s. In Japan, art festivals are used to revitalize communities facing industrial change and population loss; in Taiwan, they often focus on city branding. “We need to think more carefully about the role of art in all this,” he says.

Colorful Pearl Sea was co-created by the artists and the local community.

Colorful Pearl Sea by Yang Hai-qian and Wong Rong-can (Taiwan)

 

Chen proposes the idea of “new nature.” This refers not to untouched primitive wilderness, but a new landscape formed through long interaction between people and nature. Taoyuan’s Pearl Coast, the venue for this year’s festival, is a case in point.

After the ancient Xindian River captured the upper reaches of the Dahan River, causing the Dahan River to change course, several beheaded streams—rivers cut off from their former headwaters—were left behind. Among them, the Nankan, Xinjie, and Laojie Rivers flow to the sea. Along the coast, local communities built stone fish weirs, set up eel-fry fishing racks, and developed a tradition of beach-seine fishing, creating a landscape in which people and nature coexist. Later, industrial development brought coastal industrial parks, ports, and energy facilities, continuing to transform the shoreline. Today, the Taoyuan coast is no longer untouched nature, but a new landscape shaped jointly by natural forces and human activity. 

A migration vehicle made from driftwood by a Mongolian artist is a symbol of global movement amid the dunes.

Migration of Nature by Amarsaikhan Namsraijav (Mongolia)

 

As art has been installed near the coast, it has become a medium for rediscovering the area. Rather than trying to alter the shoreline, the works invite viewers to learn about it anew. Each tells a story of what has happened here—and what is still unfolding.

Art on the coast has become a medium through which visitors can rediscover the area.

Return to the Sea by Kim Chang Hwan (South Korea)

 

Nature as co-creator

When you approach a work, do not simply take a photograph and leave. Eric Chen reminds us that land art is not fixed once completed, but remains in an ongoing dialogue with the elements. Wind, tides, and the changing light from dawn to dusk continually alter the works, making nature a co-creator. Some of the more noteworthy works include the following:

Whom Does the Sunset Belong To? by Toshimitsu Ito (Japan)

On a beach in Xinwu, two giants gaze out to sea in Japanese artist Toshimitsu Ito’s Whom Does the Sunset Belong To? The changing light from morning to evening and the beauty of the sunset belong to no one, prompting viewers to reflect on the relationship between people and nature.

Constructing Memory by Chee Wai Loong (Malaysia)

Malaysian artist Chee Wai Loong’s Constructing Memory takes as its model the eel-fry fishing racks distinctive to Dayuan. Polished mirror-steel sheets clatter in the wind, echoing the way the racks withstand wind, waves, and tides when in the water. The work engages sight, sound, and touch.

South Korean artist Kim Chang Hwan’s Return to the Sea is a five-meter-tall giant striding toward the ocean. The artist assembled its parts from driftwood selected for its grain, and it symbolizes reconstruction, resource circulation, and the endless circle of life.

Japanese architect Norihiko Dan’s On the Sea Table places what looks like an office desk by the ocean. Its screen-like frame captures the constant movement of the seascape.

On the Sea Table by Norihiko Dan (Japan)

What remains is more than art

At Guanyin Coastal Recreation Area, we met artist Lin Shuen-long as he worked on Wandering through an Algal Reef Fortress, a large-scale public artwork supported by Taiwan’s CPC Corporation. The work reflects the area’s precious algal-reef ecology and the development pressures it faces. Asked when it would be finished, Lin joked, “In ten thousand years.” By then, perhaps sea levels will have risen and the reef-like structure, perforated with many openings, will have become a home for marine creatures, continuing to take part in the ocean’s cycle of life.

Perhaps this is what Eric Chen hopes the festival will leave behind: not simply artworks, but a way of understanding the land. The festival will eventually end, and the works may not remain forever. Yet if they prompt people to rediscover the Taoyuan coast and understand how people and nature have together shaped it, then what the art will truly leave behind will not be the objects themselves, but a way of seeing the land.