Borderless Habitat: Ecology and Art in Shared Practice

In celebration of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Taipei Cultural Center in New York, the Taiwan-US Arts and Culture Talk Series will host its fourth event on Thursday evening, July 30. Titled “Borderless Habitat: Ecology and Art in Shared Practice,” the talk features a dialogue between Taiwanese artist Chiaochi Chou and American ecologist Maria Uriarte, a professor at Columbia University. The two speakers will share how they collaborate to reveal the invisible ecological processes within forests, opening up new possibilities for contemporary artistic practice.

Artist Chou Chiao-Chi was awarded a fellowship by the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) in 2023 to conduct research in the United States. During her residency, she engaged deeply with American scientific and technological research resources and began collaborating with ecologist Maria Uriarte to explore the dialogue between ecological research and artistic creation.

Led by Maria Uriarte, the talk will introduce hidden ecological phenomena that shape global ecosystems, while sharing their joint journey across the forests of Puerto Rico and the urban landscape of New York. By translating climate data and the life histories embedded within organisms in distant forests into artistic forms that can be perceived and understood, their collaboration has resulted in an interactive moving-image work that traces sixty years of research in El Yunque National Forest, capturing the deep resonance between scientific observation and artistic narrative.

Alongside the talk, Chou and her art collective, Synphysica, will present the Borderless Habitat exhibition from July 27 to July 31 in the lobby of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York. Featuring both an interactive Mixed Reality (MR) installation and a large-scale sculpture, the exhibition invites the public to explore the relationship between humans and the natural environment.

Talk Information: “Borderless Habitat: Ecology and Art in Shared Practice”

• Time: July 30, 6–7:30pm
• Speakers: Chiaochi Chou, Maria Uriarte
• Registration Link: https://pse.is/98zsua
• Venue: Lobby, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York (1 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017)

Exhibition Information: Borderless Habitat

• Dates: July 27–July 31, 9:30am–4pm
• Artist: Chiaochi Chou & Synphysica
• Venue: Lobby, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York (1 East 42nd St, New York, NY 10017)