TAI Body Theatre and Body Phase Studio among winners at 24th Taishin Arts Award
The 24th Taishin Arts Award, one of Taiwan’s most significant prizes for contemporary art, announced its three winners at a ceremony held on 30 May 2026, selecting laureates from 16 shortlisted works across the visual and performing arts. The awards, with cash prizes totalling NT$3.5 million, were presented following three days of deliberation by a seven-member international jury chaired by respected theatre critic Chen Cheng-Hsi.
The jury committee included Chen Tai-Song (art critic); Chow Ling-Chih (curator and dramaturg); Cheng Sheng-Hua (Associate Professor, Department of Fine Arts at Tainan University of Technology); Elisabeth Millqvist (Director, Moderna Museet Malmö, Sweden); Yoshiji Yokoyama (dramaturg, SPAC-Shizuoka Performing Arts Center, Japan); and Robin Peckham (American curator and upcoming Executive Director, JD Museum, Shenzhen).
Annual Grand Prize (NT$1.5 million) qaqay by TAI Body Theatre (2025 Ocean Art Fun)
The Taishin Arts Award’s highest honour, the Annual Grand Prize, was presented to TAI Body Theatre for qaqay, a work that echoes the voice of the land through its distinctive foot-script. The jury commented: “The foot-scripts of TAI Body Theatre’s qaqay trace the shifting landscape, the sedimentation of time, and the philosophy of land by drawing on indigenous language and physicality. Staged within the Ji’an Tobacco Factory, a site with powerful spatial and historical resonance, the work excavates forgotten narratives of diaspora and provokes us to listen for murmurs and stomps that reverberate in the mountains and forests. This is, at its core, a spiritual reckoning. Confronting the agonizing reality of cultural erasure, the troupe turns to music and dance as instruments of recovery, bridging living memory with tradition and forging a singular creative aesthetic. The result is a work that pays homage to the past while looking toward the future: resilient, regenerative, and alive, despite the seeming impossibility of return.”
Performing Arts Award (NT$1 million): Oh! Baby 2025 by Body Phase Studio (2025 Taoyuan Iron Rose Festival)
The Performing Arts Award was presented to Body Phase Studio for Oh! Baby 2025, directed by Yao Lee-Chun, a work that shapes an atypical body aesthetic. The jury commented: “Oh! Baby 2025 continues Body Phase Studio’s rare and dedicated focus on the possibilities and limitations of the body. The piece opens with an encounter between two performers, Kang Sung-Kuk from Korea and Peng Pei-Hsuan from Taiwan. They transform the theatre into a site of collision between energy and desire, unleashing a chaotic eros with resilience and creativity. What emerges is both moving and thought-provoking, a reexamination of how impairment is defined and an affirmation of what remains possible therein. By overturning assumptions about the unorthodox body and foregrounding the construction of subjectivity, Oh! Baby 2025 becomes a hymn to the harsh realities of life.”
Visual Arts Award (NT$1 million) Cosmic Sketches – The LuxuryLogico Exhibition by LuxuryLogico (Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei)
The Visual Arts Award was presented to LuxuryLogico – Chen Yi, Chang Geng-Hwa, Lin Kun-Ying, and the late Chang Keng-Hau (1980–2018) – for Cosmic Sketches. The jury commented: “Through the exhibition Cosmic Sketches, LuxuryLogico showcase their achievements in 15 years of cross-disciplinary practice built on mutual inspiration and hard-won solidarity. Founded in 2010, the collective has consistently worked within spatial, technical, and creative constraints. Fifteen interlaced yet independent works – some archival, others recreated, and still others brand new – are brought together in a cosmic theatre that evolves on site. What unifies them is a profound sense of humanity, a preoccupation with the fraying bonds between man, nature, and society, and the conviction that art can mend them. Within a cultural landscape saturated by technology, the group offers an affective kinetic poetics that persists, warmly and resolutely, beyond the overwhelming reach of the contemporary digital world.”
The award-winning works showcase the powerful vitality of Taiwanese contemporary art that transcends media and disciplinary boundaries, ranging from technological dialogues between kinetic installations and the natural environment to in-depth explorations of the social body in contemporary theatre and bodily practices rooted in indigenous cultural traditions and natural history. Each winner within this diverse range reflects a unique sense of self-inquiry and expresses care and concern for our time.
In his opening remarks, Simon Cheng, Chairman of the Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture, noted that this year’s 16 shortlisted works featured several outstanding transnational collaborations between Taiwan and other countries, including Malaysia and South Korea. Cheng pointed out that these projects demonstrate that contemporary art does not seek a single standard answer. Instead, through emotional and critical tension, it expresses a range of perspectives, creating a vibrant chorus of diverse voices.
On behalf of the final jury committee, Jury Chair Chen Cheng-Hsi expressed heartfelt respect and gratitude to all artists, both present and absent. He emphasised that through their work, artists show a powerful will to resist forgetfulness, overcome limitations and push creative boundaries. Their efforts enrich the concept of “freedom”, broaden the horizons of artistic practice, offer countless audiences rewarding visual and auditory experiences, and foster a collective imagination of beauty and resilience in life during this era of turmoil.
The ceremony was designed and organised by theatre director Sue Yung-Chuen of How To Eat Faust and hosted by Karolyn Kieke, a bilingual performer and host known for her work across film, television and theatre. The event featured a distinctive performance by musician and theatre artist Tseng Po-Hao, who wove this year’s shortlisted works into a creative musical narrative. By blending traditional Taiwanese liam-kua (chant-song) with contemporary sound techniques, the performance delivered a captivating audio experience that honoured traditional arts while embracing contemporary innovation.
For further details on the shortlisted and winning works, visit the dedicated 24th Taishin Arts Award page on the official website of the Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture: taishinart.org.tw/en/art-award-year-news/2025
To watch the livestream recording of the award ceremony, visit: youtube.com/watch?v=4ecEeUQkC2g