In conjunction with Singapore Art Week 2026, artcommune and Liang Gallery are delighted to present this Taiwan-Singapore joint show featuring over 25 artworks by 8 major Taiwanese and Singapore artists : Chen Cheng-Po (b. 1895-d. 1947) , Yang San-Lang (b. 1907-d. 1995), Liao Shiou-Ping (b. 1936), and Lee Chung-Chung (b. 1942) from Taiwan, and Chen Wen Hsi (b. 1906-d. 1991), Cheong Soo Pieng (b. 1917-d. 1983), Lim Tze Peng (b. 1921-d. 2025), and Wong Keen (b. 1942) from Singapore. Mirror Straits is on view at artcommune gallery from 17 January to 15 February 2026, and will travel to Liang Gallery for its Taipei Leg in August-September 2026.

“In the postwar and Cold War decades, these artists—positioned within diasporic Chinese networks—constructed a different emotional and cultural imaginary, distinct from both international abstraction and socialist realism. Their practices evoke a third space, one that integrates national elements, locality, and cosmopolitan modernism…this exhibition proposes a point of beginning from which a deeper art-historical dialogue between the two can begin.” Curator of Mirror Straits, Takamori Nobuo

Mirror Straits is curated by Taiwanese independent curator Takamori Nobuo, chief-curator of 2021 Asian Arts Biennial, Phantasmapolis, organised by National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, and chief-curator of the current 2025 Green Island Biennial. Nobuo’s research and curatorial work aim to evoke the hidden linkage and often-overlooked connections between Taiwan and the Global South. 

By examining the works of these Taiwanese and Singapore artists in dialogue, the exhibition seeks to demonstrate how the artistic developments in Taiwan and Singapore before and after the war unfolded along parallel trajectories that were distinct yet culturally intertwined.

The 8 artists featured in this exhibition span both prewar and postwar generations. During the Japanese colonial period in Taiwan, Chen Cheng-Po (b. 1895-d. 1947) and Yang San-Lang (b. 1907-d. 1995) embraced modern art as a language for expressing Taiwan’s emerging local identity. Their artistic pursuits find resonance with Singapore pioneers Chen Wen Hsi (b. 1906-1991) and Cheong Soo Pieng (b. 1917-1983), who similarly navigated the tensions between international modernism, regional context, and Chinese artistic traditions. The legacies of these pioneering modern artists continued to shape the postwar cultural landscape, opening new avenues for artistic expression in both Taiwan and Singapore.

The exhibition also highlights a second group of 4 artists—Taiwan’s Liao Shiou-Ping (b. 1936) and Lee Chung-Chung (b. 1942), alongside Singapore’s Lim Tze Peng (b. 1921-2025), and Wong Keen (b. 1942). This later generation of artists continued to reinterpret the traditions and visual lexicon of Chinese ink heritage through their own unique lens, adapting its symbols and aesthetics to new cultural environments and modes of artistic expressions.