En-Man Chang Participates in the Taipei Touring Exhibition “Breaking Ground: Art and Activism in Indigenous Taiwan”

Installation view of breaking ground: Art and activism in indigenous taiwan, photo courtesy of the artist.

Nunu Fine Art is pleased to share recent exhibition news of artist Chang En-Man, who is participating in the group exhibition Breaking Ground: Art and Activism in Indigenous Taiwan, on view at the Ministry of Culture Gallery from April 23 to August 21, 2026. Previously presented at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the exhibition returns to Taiwan this year with a Taipei touring presentation. 

Co-organized by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Breaking Ground: Art and Activism in Indigenous Taiwan focuses on activist practices in contemporary Indigenous art, exploring questions of coloniality, Indigeneity, identity, belief, land, survival, and social justice. Bringing together ten Taiwanese Indigenous artists and artist collectives, the exhibition presents how Indigenous artistic practices respond to colonial histories, global Indigenous issues, and contemporary social realities. 

As one of the key participating artists in the exhibition, Chang En-Man has long explored the living conditions and cultural memory of Indigenous peoples in Taiwan under the intertwined forces of modernization, urbanization, and colonial history. Working across moving image, photography, installation, and collaborative practice, Chang draws from her own lived experience and Indigenous background to uncover overlooked or lost historical narratives, connecting personal experience, local memory, species migration, and broader global Indigenous issues. 

Chang’s featured work, Snail Paradise Concerto – Chapter of Santa Fe (2025), continues her long-term Snail Paradise series. The version presented at the Ministry of Culture Gallery is made with paper mulberry bark, document transfer, and embroidery, measuring 400 × 100 × 50 cm, and was commissioned by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Taking the African giant snail—originating from East Africa and listed among the world’s top 100 invasive species—as a medium through which to explore the world, the work interweaves species dispersion, human migration, and colonial history into a complex network. 

In Chang’s practice, the dissolving relationship between Taiwan-native paper mulberry and snail mucus points to the routes and traces left by the movements of plants, animals, and humans. Within these intersecting paths, the artist wanders in a mode akin to bardic storytelling and concerto, searching for voices that carry colonial trauma and historical remnants. Through Snail Paradise Concerto – Chapter of Santa Fe, Chang further places the movement of natural species alongside the historical experiences of Indigenous peoples, showing how Indigenous art may become a medium for responding to colonial realities, reconstructing cultural memory, and proposing forms of social action. 

Exhibition Information: Breaking Ground: Art and Activism in Indigenous Taiwan 
Venue: Ministry of Culture Gallery 
Address: 1F, South Building, Xinzhuang Joint Office Tower, No. 439, Zhongping Road, Xinzhuang District, New Taipei City 242030, Taiwan 
Dates: April 23 – August 21, 2026