2026 Tainan Mattauw Land Art Season opens with the theme of Huizeng Wenxili Qianshan

The 2026 Tainan Mattauw Land Art Season kicked off today with a lively opening. With the theme of "Meandering Pendulum: Zeng Wen River's Li Qian Mountain", starting from a river and connecting 7 exhibition areas along the line, 37 groups of artists and teams were assembled, and 42 works were brilliantly presented.

The opening ceremony was held at the Zongye Art Center. This year, 8 curators jointly curated 14 sub-projects and carried out a 93-day art journey, which lasted until December 6, leading the public along the flow of Zeng Wen Creek into shallow mountain settlements and local life that may not necessarily be visible in ordinary times.

The "Mattauw" Land Art Season continues the curatorial spirit with "watershed" as its core. This year, the "Meandering Pendulum" is used to imagine the way Zeng Wen Creek is. The river never moves in a straight line, but winds and turns between the land, forming a unique landscape that also nurtures the industries, beliefs, ecology and life memories of the settlements along the coast.

This year’s home venue is in Zongye, extending to Zengwen Reservoir, Guantian Bailin, Liujiaoziliao, and Zuozhen, plus Nanxi Mizhi and Zhaoxing settlements, and a satellite exhibition venue is set up at Qigudingshan Elementary School. Different from traditional centralized exhibitions, the works are scattered throughout the river basin, using different media such as installations, images, sounds, smells... to allow the public to see art while moving, and become a river basin journey to explore settlements, natural landscapes and life stories.

The Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Municipal Government invited artists to conduct field surveys in the Zengwen River Basin, and conduct on-site creations and exchanges, ranging from rivers, ecology, industries, beliefs to daily life; "Meandering Pendulum - River Basin Feast" is one of the important large-scale works of this year's art season. Artist Huang Wenyuan collected drifting bamboo and driftwood along the Zengwen River and reorganized it into a circular landscape, transforming the natural traces left by the river's long-term transportation and accumulation into an art space that can be walked into.

This year, the "Basin Bus" is planned to run every Saturday and Sunday and is fixed at Shanhua Railway Station. It will lead the public to go deep into each exhibition area and follow the artist's creative perspective into the place to understand how the works respond to the land. It also connects the natural and cultural resources scattered throughout the Zengwen Stream Basin with each other to form a more complete local cultural experience.