top of page
2024
CANOPY PROJECT
Café de Chino – How Dear Things Are Absent
WORKING HARD
2024/10/19 - 12/21
Café de Chino – How Dear Things Are Absent presents Working Hard's observation of the fading of Chinese cafés in Mexico and how their persona and identity are disappearing within society.
Over the past century, these Chinese-operated cafes, established by pioneer immigrants, offered affordable meals to workers and students around the clock. Reaching their peak in the 1950s, these local hubs became deeply ingrained in collective memory as recognisable intercultural dining spaces.
The spatial choreography of the exhibition is structured around the idea of a deconstructed film set, staged as a café, with the passage of time serving as its scripted narrative. In this unmanned scenario of absent hosts and guests, a sense of alienation is orchestrated through the still life arrangement. Conceptualised through themes of memory and resistance, this scenographic composition captures the lingering echoes of forgotten or overlooked diasporas and their histories, creating a mise-en-scène that reflects the chronological tension in weathered memory.
Date ❘ 2024/10/19 - 12/21
Opening ❘ 10/18(Fri) 19:00 （& Guided Tour）
Coffee Time ❘ Thursdays 15:00-17:00, coffee available in limited quantities.
Venue ❘ Hong Foundation（12F, No.9, Sec. 2, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei）
Visiting ❘ 11:00-18:00（Closed on Sundays and national holidays）
ARTIST
WORKING HARD
Artist：Working Hard is a Taiwanese artist duo by She Wen-Ying and Kuo Po-Yu since 2015, currently living and working between Taiwan and Europe. In 2024, they were in the artist residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris and were recipients of the Ministry of Culture’s Young Artists Development Program. They were previously selected for the Ministry of Culture’s Talent Exchange Program, which led them to a residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Germany. Combining field research with visual art, their work seeks to engage with local communities through storytelling, cultural exchange, and learning. Their work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Chiayi Art Museum, and C-Lab in Taipei.
Curator：Jo Ying Peng is a Taiwanese independent curator currently based in Mexico City and runs Vernacular Institute. Her practice ranges across curatorial, editorial, and cinematic boundaries to expand possibilities beyond linear narratives. She has curated exhibitions at SOMA, Berlin (2024), MARCO museum, Monterrey (2023), Deluge Contemporary Art, Vancouver (2021), ARIEL, Copenhagen, Copenhagen (2020), and Taipei Contemporary Art Center, among others.
Courtesy of Artist, photo by Whose Image Studio
bottom of page