Stories Written by the Sky

Artists：

HSURAE, Nancy Valladares, Paul Yeh, Haamid Rahim, Huang Wei

Exhibition Date｜2025.10.25-12.14 (Closed on Mondays)

Opening｜2025.10.25 14:30 (The exhibition will open to the public after the opening ceremony. We apologize for the inconvenience.)

Venue｜U-108 SPACE, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

About the Exhibition

If a seed could speak of its memories, which fragments would it carry into the future? In this immersive cinematic installation, the red quinoa becomes a narrator—not merely a plant, but a witness, a traveler. It tells us that it has tasted the hot breeze of Taiwan and once lay still beneath the permafrost of the Arctic.

Stories Written by the Sky is a collaborative work by HSURAE, Nancy Valladares, Paul Yeh, Haamid Rahim (Dynoman), and Huang Wei. Inspired by the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and the surrounding Arctic terrain, the work departs from the perspective of the indigenous Taiwanese red quinoa to construct a narrative journey that spans geological time, evolutionary time, and human time. The story is non-linear and does not belong to a single subject. It is a spiraling, collective dream, reassembled again and again through audience interaction.

From the southern tip of the island, the red quinoa crosses the ocean to reach the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault, and eventually emerges from the soil in a post-apocalyptic world. In the moment of germination, it remembers: a warming island, the collapse of glaciers, drifting lands, disappearing languages……These fractured memories await an audience to recollect itself.

The work invites viewers to reconstruct these fragments using a physical memory puzzle made of tiles. Each selection triggers a corresponding combination of video, soundscape, and narrative, producing a unique version of the memory. No two experiences are ever the same. Within this open narrative, the audience navigates through temporal multiplicity while contemplating themes of destruction, migration, and regeneration.

Stories Written by the Sky is not only a meditation on climate change, species preservation, and human futures, but it is also a reimagining of the nature of storytelling itself. In this installation, the “story” no longer belongs to a single narrator; instead, it emerges in the space between the audience and the materials. This nonlinear, polyphonic narrative structure allows each participant to shape their own path through the work. The seed is no longer a passive object to be preserved, but a speaker and memory bearer, reflecting on how we might live with the land, with history, and with what comes next.

Production Team

HSURAE│Creative Director

HSURAE is the director of HSUHSU Studio. Her practice embraces the concept of latency within nature and its artifice. Instead of working to reveal or accelerate, they find small pleasures in the indeterminacy that latent space and latent knowledge offers. Their creative approach often co-opts scientific and technological vocabulary to challenge existing methodologies and field classifications. They hold a Master of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and has taught at New York University, Parsons School of Design at The New School, and Shih Chien University.

Nancy Valladares│Artistic Director

Nancy Dayanne Valladares is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and educator based in New York. Trained in photography and film, her work explores the networks and technopolitics of image-making—from sensors and servers to metal extraction and the carbon footprint of the cloud. She teaches new media, narrative design, and storytelling at Parsons School of Design at The New School and holds a Master of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Art, Culture, and Technology program.

Paul Yeh│Technical Director

Paul Yeh is a creative technologist at FabCafe Taipei. With a background in industrial design and hands-on training, he possesses skills in creating both virtual experiences and physical objects. Yeh is dedicated to researching and developing physical computing devices that can enhance the immersive and expressive qualities of XR experiences.

Haamid Rahim│Sound Designer and Original Score Composer

Haamid Rahim, also known as Dynoman, is a composer, sound designer, artist, and performer based in Brooklyn. With works that include original pieces, soundtracks, electronic music, and other formats, he creates art using sound and places emphasis on the exploration of narrative possibilities.

Huang Wei│360° Projection Designer and Integration Lead

Huang Wei is a digital artist specializing in XR, projection, and immersive storytelling, as he explores where reality and virtuality meet and the poetics of space. His works have been exhibited at the Kaohsiung Film Festival and the Lille Cathedral in France. On a continual mission to expand the possibilities of immersive art, he has also collaborated with institutions such as Taiwan’s National Theater and Concert Hall, the Taichung National Theater, and the XR2C2 Extended Reality Research and Creative Center in Cannes.

Special Thanks

University Cafe Taipei

FabCafe Taipei

Loftwork

Tim Wong

Ethan Kan

Pin-Hua Chen

Maggie Coblentz, MIT Media Lab Research Specialist

Marjolaine Verret, Temporary Associate Professor at the Department of Arctic Geology of the University Centre in Svalbard

Ugo Nanni, Glaciologist at the University of Oslo in Norway

Zone Sound Collective

Arts and Culture Organization in Svalbard Artica Svalbard

Dashulin Detention Basin, Department of Water Resources, Taoyuan

The red quinoa fields in Majia Township, Pingtung

Panpan Hua Studio

Atelier TBD

Lythologies.org