En-Man Chang: Mapping Snail
Nunu Fine Art New York is pleased to present Mapping Snail, En-Man Chang’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. As part of the Project Space: Asian Voices program, this exhibition reflects Chang’s focus on how Taiwan’s Indigenous communities navigate the irreversible processes of modernization—balancing cultural identity, social realities, and existential negotiation—while envisioning alternative worldviews through artistic practice.
Born in Taitung, Taiwan, Chang integrates field research, historical investigation, and personal memory into her work, exploring the resilience and regeneration of Indigenous cultures in the aftermath of colonialism and under the ongoing pressures of globalization. The exhibition features a series of video and embroidery works that weave together geographic memory, traditional craft, and contemporary visual language, mapping a delicate narrative of time, movement, and identity.
The exhibition draws on the migration history of the Giant African Snail. Originating from East Africa, this species has become one of the world’s most invasive due to colonial expansion and global trade. In 1933, during Japanese colonial rule, officials imported the snail from Singapore to Taiwan for food cultivation. Its migration routes reflect the trajectories of imperial conquest, while its persistent, hard-to-remove mucus metaphorically evokes the enduring traces of colonial presence. In contrast, the leaves of the native paper mulberry tree can easily remove the snail’s mucus—a plant whose genetic history supports the theory that Taiwan is the origin of the Austronesian peoples. These layered connections form the conceptual foundation of Chang’s artistic inquiry.
In Snail Paradise Trilogy: Setting Sail or Final Chapter series, Chang’s embroidery works transform plants associated with snail-based cuisine into cross-stitch patterns, creating a visual archive of craft techniques to preserve traditional practices for future generations. Cross-stitching is used by certain Indigenous Taiwanese groups and often features symmetrical geometric motifs that signify social hierarchy, tribal identity, ancestral belief, or nature worship. In the video, Chang adopts the persona of the griot (the oral storyteller), by performing rain-invocation chants, reimagining the maritime odyssey of the Giant African Snail.
In another video Snail Playground, the slow-moving snail takes center stage. Its deliberate, unhurried movements—stretching, pausing, retracting—are captured with a sensitivity that recalls slow-motion cinematography. On its back, the snail carries miniature architectural models that resemble iconic landmarks from around the world. As it glides across a miniature landscape resembling a Taiwanese vegetable garden, it creates a scene that feels both familiar and surreal. This wandering, without a fixed destination, becomes a metaphor for the drifting and displacement of bodies and spaces within the modern geopolitical order.
This exhibition positions the snail as a symbol connecting ecological, colonial, and cultural histories. Through embroidery, video, and sound, Chang responds to ongoing discourses in contemporary art surrounding decentralization and marginalized voices, offering a visual language rooted in memory and a non-Western worldview. Mapping Snail not only rethinks narratives of history, migration, and identity, but brings a unique perspective, grounded in Indigenous experience, to the field of Asian contemporary art—expanding the global artistic conversation with new directions and sensibilities.