Before wrapping up, I would like to share a new collaborative work with
@yalanlanlan that is deeply personal to me. “Guest Stop (In Transit)” emerges from our shared experience growing up as Hakka Taiwanese, a community whose name, Ha-kka (客家) carries the dual meaning of guest and family. We both grew up in Hakka village, and later left home, first for education and later for work.
Throughout Taiwan‘s history, how people have long occupied a shifting and often precarious position. Many arrived as undocumented migrants from China, later lived under Japanese colonization, and continued adapting through successive national regimes. These layer history remain embedded in everyday speech, memory, and kinship. As descendants of this history, Yalan and I carry these accumulations in our language practices.
At home we speak Hakkafa with our grandparents, Mandarin with our parents and siblings, an English and professional and international context. This continual crossing of linguistic boundary echoes to colonial history and adoptions that have shaped to the Taiwanese Hakka experience.
Present it as a three-channel video installation with spoken words, the work transformed the gallery into awaiting space that exists between departure and arrival. Stairs serve a seating; curtains and objects dyed in Hakka blue divide the room into zones of pause and passage. The system randomly select and fragments of text written by us, drawn from personal memories as well as ancestral stories and oral histories. Voices in Hakkafa, Mandarin and English fill the space with real-time subtitles, telling stories of childhood, migration, and belonging.
The work is currently on view from December 18, 2025 to January 3, 2026 daily leave from 11 AM to 6 PM at Crossing Art, Chelsea, New York (559 W 23 St, New York, NY 10011). This is part of an exhibition “A Story That Lives Within US: Ada” curated by
@naomichan.art .
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Guest Stop (In Transit), 2025
Three channel installation, spoken words, cyanotype prints, curtains.
Yalan Wen and Munus Shih.
Courtesy the Artist.
Hakkafa translated and narrated by Warren Peng.
