Instance Dungeons and Sights

Date｜2026. 03. 28 — 2026. 06. 28
Time｜Tue.-Fri. 09:00～17:00, Sat.-Sun. 09:00～18:00
Venue｜Gallery 103-107 & Gallery Street, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts
Curator｜CHEN Hsiang-Wen

Organizer｜National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts
Co-organizer｜Ministry of Culture
Special Thanks｜Bureau Français de Taipei

The exhibition was supported by the Ministry of Culture (Taiwan), R.O.C., under the Technology Art Venues Innovation Project.

Introduction｜

Standing on the precarious fault line of the First Island Chain, Taiwan is a place of great geostrategic importance that has been constantly subjected to gray-zone surveillance and maneuvers. Grounding itself in this reality, the exhibition adopts a gamified worldview to address issues concerning information warfare, geopolitics, and the ethics of war. However, the intent is neither to collect and display documentary footage of conflicts nor to reenact scenes of battlefield trauma. Instead, this exhibition seeks to invite profound reflection on the “mechanism of the image” through the participating artists’ diverse creative approaches and heterogeneous perspectives.

The exhibition’s narrative comprises three sub-themes. The works in “Character Selection and Visual Calibration” hack game machinima and break down the logic of 3D modeling software and optical instruments to probe the mirrored affinities between the virtual and the real. “The Fog of War Ahead” exposes the fragility of ideologies and borders across different contexts, where the relentless acceleration of imaging and Internet technologies jostles for space vis-à-vis the episteme and media literacy. “Developer Mode Loaded” features artistic propositions on the competition, skepticism, and collaboration between humans and imaging tools, aiming to decode the power relations concealed behind this networked edifice of images.

The globe has become a colossal theater of war. Conflicts and power struggles across different regions manifest as isolated “instance dungeons.” Bound by the invisible hands of the post-Cold War structure, these battlegrounds lurk in the shadows of opposing blocs and interweave conflicts across the world. Yet, compared to border skirmishes between countries, the virtual battlefields of information and cybernetics cut far deeper into the fabric of human society. From the voyeuristic gaze of early aerial reconnaissance to the AI-driven drone swarms of today, the camera lens has evolved into a device of “indirect” sighting. Contemporary military operations are undergoing total “derealization”—where images triumph over material objects, rendering the act of killing abstract. Catalyzed by the AI boom, slaughter has become an automated, sterile process. This high-tech virtual interface acts as a “frame” or filter for violence. It preemptively adjudicates—before we feel any emotion—which lives are “grievable,” and which bodies are mere debris to be purged... or simply inconsequential.

Ultimately, we are compelled to face the inescapable fact: those who control the image and the Internet write the scripts of war. Real-world capital rivalries, armed conflicts, and geopolitics have been gamified, merging into our quotidian existence via the ubiquity of news cycles and social media. This was not an overnight shift, but a slow immersion that insidiously altered our perception. Nonetheless, this does not mean we are relegated to the role of passive NPCs. By maintaining critical lucidity, we find that genuine agency and potency always reside with those capable of transcending the confines of established frameworks. At this crucial juncture, the exhibition seeks to leverage the reflexivity of art to sustain awareness, continually recalibrating the coordinates that lead us forward.

Artists｜

Alice BUCKNELL
Kévin BRAY
CHEN Ting-Jung
Ting-Ting CHENG
César ESCUDERO ANDALUZ
HSU Che-Yu & CHEN Wan-Yin
JUAN Po-Yuan
Olivia KOH
LI Yi-Fan
LIN Yu-Liang
LIU Guang-Li
Ryotaro SATO
Total Refusal
WANG Lien-Cheng 
Éléonore WEBER