Art Taipei
Taiwan Art Gallery Association is hosting an Art Fair in Taipei.
Having experienced the city of Taipei for the first time this year, DESK can vouch for the place’s vibe and we felt a genuineness in the way people care about art, design, and making. In a way that feels more like just a part of how things are rather than a spectacle to behold. There were things to try, things to ake, things to do, but these were found everywhere and didn’t have to be packaged and put into a ‘white cube’…. like the gallery scene can veer towards a little too soon. Things get out of hand and esoteric real fast. Guilty of this, in the first four or ten iterations of Design Kompany. I understand we get lofty about art, ideals, existentialism. I also know, ‘No one cares.’
What people care about is their own experience of art, and for that, I think I would look for things that optimize for people to interpret what they wish, as and how they want to.
Representatives from the Art Taipei event write, ‘ART TAIPEI was established in 1992.’ This year, a central focus for them is to show people how the city can have “Art and Technology Symbiosis.” Honestly, I don’t think they need an event for that, just have more people pop in the way I happened to. It’s a cool blend of very old and modernity without the show-off quality that some modern cities can have. (Let me say Taipei contrasts in this way with, say, San Francisco, which was boring in 2026. Maybe because it wants to do too much with being bright and shiny, I feel. Maybe because I was last there in 2014 and things were more optimistic, Stateside, then.)
I know that art galleries are places to buy and sell just like the big onilne marketplaces or big box stores where I come from or, well, everything now. It’s all about buying and selling, but it… doesn’t have to be.
Other things have value. Time. Yes.
Time, for example. Time shared with people you care about. Getting to know people better so you start to care. These things. I am not going to turn this event listing into a philosophy piece, but I have a feeling you can get some of that kind of value by interacting with anything that happens in Taipei.
Let me spell this out. Sure, I know that the art world has a thing about selling massively expensive things for people who want to ‘invest’ in art, but that’s not the reason I suggest checking out this fair, if you go. I suggest it because it’s in Taipei, and there’s a world of experiences outside of the halls, too, that feel more real, I found, than other places in the region can that try to stage an art event, like Singapore, which was shiny back in January when I went for their Art Week events. But ultimately apart from the food and people who have a lot of heart, I didn’t feel the experience in SG was worth it–if you want to go to a big art fair, skip Art Singapore, go to Art Taipei. That’s my take.
For info on the fair, see info here… https://2026.art-taipei.com/