NTCAM Collection: Between Arts and Folk Cultures

Event Title: NTCAM Collection: Between Arts and Folk Cultures
Event Dates: May 9 (Sat) – August 2 (Sun)
Venue: NTCAM: 4A Gallery

New Taipei City has been shaped by the coexistence and interweaving of diverse communities, creating a richly layered fabric of folk culture and cultural landscapes. Ritual practices, belief systems, and everyday customs passed down through generations have been systematically documented and studied through the lens of cultural heritage preservation and field research. However, from the perspective of modern and contemporary art, these cultural forms are not viewed as static objects worth preserving. Instead, artists use creative transformation and critical interpretation to reframe folk culture not as something to be conserved, but as a living, evolving field—one that continues to develop through each generation’s acts of viewing and interpretation.

Since its earliest planning stages, the New Taipei City Art Museum has focused on building a locally grounded art history. Through various thematic approaches, the museum has gradually developed a collection system rooted in local perspectives. Among these, “the folk” serves as a central theme, reflecting the museum’s ongoing engagement with vernacular knowledge, folk culture, and daily life. Using its collection as a foundation, this exhibition adopts “the folk” as a curatorial framework, bringing together works by ten artists. Spanning different generations and a variety of media, the exhibition showcases diverse cultural perspectives while opening up new possibilities for dialogue between the collection and the public.

The exhibition is structured around three sections: Folk into Image, Ritual Scenes, and Observing the Human Condition. Through their observation and interpretation of folk symbols, belief systems, and ritual settings, the participating artists record, deconstruct, and reconfigure these cultural elements through artistic means. At the same time, through the lens of folk belief, their works reflect on contemporary social realities and the spectrum of human experience. “Ferrying”, in the Chinese title of exhibition, suggests a movement back and forth between shores, but also a shifting position from which to observe and to understand. The artist’s perspective, like a small vessel, guides us in returning to the realm of the folk, shuttling between decoding and reimagining its symbols and between reflection and inquiry into the social world.

For More Information: https://ntcart.museum/en/exhibition_content.aspx?id=H2604002