New Ecological Art Environment: The Seven Years Before the Subsidy Structure, in a 400-Ping Old House on Yongfu Road in 1992

30-Second Overview: In June 1992, Du Zhao-xian, who previously operated the Jia Shi Gallery, opened the "New Ecological Art Environment" in a 400-plus ping old building on Section 2 of Yongfu Road, Tainan. It exhibited contemporary art, screened documentaries, hosted small theater performances, and sold coffee. The National Cultural and Artistic Foundation had not yet been established, the National Tainan College of Arts had not yet opened, and the MOCA's "Reuse of Idle Spaces" policy was not yet online. It survived for seven years; when it closed its doors in 1999, the institutional nervous system of Taiwan's contemporary art was just beginning to grow—it ran ahead of all subsidy structures, and by the time subsidies finally entered, such self-operated spaces instead began to exit.

That Old Building at 138 Yongfu Road, Section 2

In 1992, Section 2 of Yongfu Road in Tainan had no later graffiti from the Hae'an Road Art Street project, no neon signs from B.B.ART, and no tourist crowds from the Blueprint Cultural and Creative Park. An old building on Yongfu Road, spanning over 400 ping, had been vacant for a long time. Du Zhao-xian rented it and hung a sign reading "New Ecological Art Environment."¹

Pushing open the entrance led to a gallery; the first floor also had a bookstore and coffee seating, the second floor was an exhibition space and small theater, and the basement could screen documentaries. A single space crammed together contemporary art, performance art, documentaries, literature, and coffee: this was unprecedented in Tainan at the time. Galleries in Tainan were all commercial spaces selling paintings; alternative spaces in Taipei (such as Yitong Park and No. 2 Apartment) were mostly single-function spaces run solely by artists. New Ecological took a composite approach, for practical reasons: pure exhibition spaces could not survive in Tainan.²

Du Zhao-xian came from a jewelry merchant family in Tainan. "He often said that looking at gems more could absorb 'gem energy' and cultivate one's eye, so from a young age I would pay attention to all things beautiful," she recalled about her father.³ In 1984, she opened "Shi Bao Fang Life Professional Space," selling home decor while buying reproduction paintings in Taipei; it was the second gallery in Tainan. From home decor to gallery, from gallery to composite art space: her trajectory moved from the commercial periphery toward the core of contemporary art, not the other way around.

An Extra-Institutional Space Born on the Eve of Institutional Entry

When New Ecological opened in 1992, the subsidy structure for Taiwan's contemporary art was almost empty.

Although the MOCA (Council of Cultural Affairs) was established in 1981, subsidies in the early 1990s were primarily applied through individual projects, with no regular institutional subsidies for alternative spaces. The National Cultural and Artistic Foundation was not established until 1996, when "Regular Subsidies for Visual Arts" formally brought alternative spaces into the system.⁴ The National Tainan College of Arts (later the National Taiwan University of Arts) was also established in 1996, initially having only four graduate institutes (Sculpture, Audio-Visual Documentation, Museology, Art History and Theory); the Department of Fine Arts was added later.⁵ The MOCA's "Reuse of Idle Spaces" policy was not commissioned to the Department of Architecture at National Dong Hwa University for evaluation until 1997; the "Railway Art Network" project did not go online until 2000; and the Chiayi Railway Art Village was not opened until 2002.⁶ The Kaohsiung Pier-2 Art Center did not have an association established until 2001, nor did it open until 2002.⁷

📝 Curator's Note
The common narrative is "Taiwan's alternative spaces flourished in the 1990s with the support of cultural subsidies." But this narrative reverses the timeline. When New Ecological opened in 1992, the subsidy structure had not yet grown; when the subsidy structure finally arrived (NCFA 1996, Railway Network 2000, Pier-2 2002), such self-operated composite spaces instead began to exit. New Ecological was not a product of the subsidy structure, but an incubator before the subsidy structure grew.

In other words: the seven years New Ecological was alive (1992–1999) coincided with the gap in Taiwan's contemporary art transitioning from a "Hall System" (mainly the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, supplemented by commercial galleries) to an "Institutional System" (NCFA + National University of the Arts + government idle space policies). It was the representative species of this gap.

A Single Director, Art Director Named Zheng Ming-quan

Early oral histories from INBOX circulated the story that New Ecological was a trio creation, placing Jiang Yao-xian, Ye Zhu-sheng, and Du Zhao-xian together. But returning to primary archives: Ye Xing-rou's long article in Digital Wasteland (2023), the Taiwan Gallery Certification Database TAGA, and the Taiwan Contemporary Art Database TCAA all record: Founder Du Zhao-xian alone, Art Director Zheng Ming-quan.¹⁸⁹

This is not nitpicking. The problem with the trio narrative is that it assumes Tainan's alternative spaces in the 1990s followed an "artist self-operated" model, an assumption derived from Taipei's IT Park (co-created in 1988 by four artists: Liu Qing-tang, Zhuang Pu, Chen Hui-qiao, Huang Wen-hao)¹⁰ and No. 2 Apartment (formed in 1989 by artist members Wu Ma-li, Fan Jiang Ming-dao, Ye Zi-qi, Lin Hong-wen, etc.)¹¹. Alternative spaces in Taipei were collectively self-operated by artists, but New Ecological in Tainan was led by a planner with a commercial background, employing a professional art director for execution: these are two different alternative space ecologies.

"In that era, we couldn't enter art museums, there were no opportunities within the system, so we created extra-system spaces," Wu Ma-li explained the logic behind the founding of No. 2 Apartment.¹¹ In 1991, No. 2 Apartment even directly stormed into the Taipei Fine Arts Museum's B04 exhibition room, presenting the first installment of the "Avant-Garde · Experimental" series: "Apartment—1991." This was the posture of artists breaking into the system from the outside. New Ecological's posture was different: it did not seek to break into the Taipei Fine Arts Museum; instead, it built a micro-system in Tainan: contemporary art, documentaries, and small theater all resolved in one street.

A Social Movement Documentary Exhibition in the Summer of 1992

Not long after opening, New Ecological hosted the "Voices from the Frontier—Taiwan Social Movement Documentary Exhibition."¹ In 1992, it was only five years after the lifting of martial law, four years after the lifting of press restrictions (1988), and two years after the end of the News Bureau's song censorship system (1990). Records of social movements had not yet entered mainstream distribution channels; most circulated within small circles of independent documentary makers and social movement groups.

New Ecological brought these films to Tainan, placing them in a space that sold coffee and hosted galleries. The field for doing this in Taipei already existed (Green Team, Third Image Studio), but not in Tainan. For the 1992 Tainan audience, this was a scene dislocation: "an art space screening social movement documentaries." But this dislocation itself was New Ecological's proposition.

💡 Did You Know
The Taiwan contemporary art circle habitually anchors the timeline of "alternative spaces" to 1988 (Yitong Park) and 1989 (No. 2 Apartment), but these are all in Taipei. New Ecological opened in 1992, 3–4 years later than these two, yet it was the first alternative space outside Taipei with complete contemporary art discourse energy. Before this, contemporary art in Tainan, Taichung, and Kaohsiung could only look to Taipei.

The Turning Point Five Years Later: "Tainan Imagery" in 1995

In the fourth year of New Ecological's operation, it held an exhibition called "Tainan Imagery—Voting for Tainan's Key Spatial Resources."¹ On the surface, it was a contemporary art exhibition; in reality, it was a citizen participation project: inviting citizens to vote on which spaces should be preserved, which buildings were worth renovating, and which neighborhoods constituted Tainan's contemporary imagery.

This exhibition had prophetic significance for Du Zhao-xian's own career trajectory later on. After New Ecological closed in 1999, she went to the San Francisco Art Institute to study; upon returning to Taiwan, she no longer operated a "gallery" in the traditional sense—she began to operate an entire street.¹²

The INART Gallery (established in 2007) and the "Hae'an Road Art Street" project (brewed in the same era, receiving the Special Jury Prize at the Taishin Art Awards in 2004) moved art from indoor exhibition spaces to city streets.¹³ B.B.ART (established in 2012) transformed an old building on Minquan Road, formerly the Tainan Huayang Department Store, into a composite space.¹⁴ The logic is consistent with New Ecological's renovation of the Yongfu Road old house in 1992; the difference is that the scale shifted from one building to one street, and then to one district.

📝 Curator's Note
The common explanation writes Du Zhao-xian's trajectory as "moving from alternative spaces to public art." But a more precise view is: what she did from the beginning to the end was "stuffing art into existing urban scenes." In 1992, she stuffed it into one old building; in 2007, into one street; in 2012, into one district. New Ecological was the place where her methodology first fully developed; every subsequent space has been redoing this.

The 1996 "Local and International Interactive Experiment" with Eslite

From February 2 to 4, 1996, New Ecological collaborated with the basement floor of Eslite Gallery Dun Nan Store in Taipei for a cross-city co-hosted event called "Local and International Interactive Experiment." Performers included Jiang Zhicui Theater, Nu Ma Zhao Ze (Curse Swamp), and Sublime Beers.¹

Sublime Beers had just formed; lead singer Xiao Ying's stage charm was still accumulating; Curse Swamp was a representative of late-1990s experimental music; Jiang Zhicui Theater was founded by Zhou Yichang in 1993, a newly emerging Southern Chinese music experimental theater. The three groups together crossed Southern Chinese music, underground rock, and experimental noise: this type of cross-genre mixing was rare in 1996.

In the same year (1995) in Taipei, Huang Wen-hao had just extended from Yitong Park to create "Local Experiment" (ETAT), pushing the direction of experimentation from visual arts to the internet, media, and new media art.¹⁵ Looking at the two timelines side by side is interesting:

1988  IT Park on Yitong Street, Taipei — Artist self-operated, pure visual arts
1989  No. 2 Apartment on Xinsheng South Road, Taipei — Artist self-operated, cross-performance and installation
1992  New Ecological Art Environment on Yongfu Road, Tainan — Commercial background planner, composite (gallery + small theater + documentary + coffee)
1995  Local Experiment (ETAT) in Taipei — Also led by Huang Wen-hao, but shifting to new media and internet art
1996  National Cultural and Artistic Foundation established, National Tainan College of Arts founded
1999  New Ecological closes
2000  Railway Art Network goes online
2001  Pier-2 Art Development Association established
2002  Railway Art Network Chiayi station opens, Pier-2 Art Center opens

From 1988 to 2002, these 14 years saw Taiwan's alternative spaces evolve from "artist spontaneity" to "government idle space policy takeover." New Ecological sat exactly in the middle of this transition. Its survival strategy: composite operation, cross-disciplinary, not relying on a single subsidy: this was a third route, unnamed in full, between Taipei's self-operated model and the government policy takeover model.

This third route had no existing vocabulary to describe it at the time. The concept of "alternative space" (alternative space) circulated in the Taiwan art circle in the 1990s, primarily describing the IT Park in Taipei model of "artists couldn't enter the system so they did it themselves." New Ecological's situation was different: Du Zhao-xian herself was a commercial gallery operator; she did not seek to confront the system, but chose to mix commercial and non-commercial elements in the same composite space. Letting gallery income support documentary screenings, letting coffee foot traffic drive exhibition crowds, letting bookstore shelves display tickets for experimental theater. This economic model was reinvented in the 2010s by Eslite, Good Sample, and the Tainan old house renovation wave; the inventor was actually Du Zhao-xian in 1992.

This invention grew as it was made, without prior theory. An old building of 400-plus ping needed an economic logic to sustain it; pure artist self-operated spaces could not survive in Tainan. Tainan was not like Taipei with large numbers of collectors, nor like Kaohsiung with public sector resources; only a compromise solution of "commercial + non-commercial mix" could sustain a space of this scale. New Ecological was actually a large-scale experiment in Tainan's art economy in the 1990s: this experiment concluded a phase in 1999, but the experimental results were continuously used by later people.

The 1997 Move and the 1999 Closure

Du Zhao-xian moved the space from Yongfu Road to 261 Minquan Road, Section 2 in 1997,⁸ stepping down as director in the same year. New Ecological continued to operate until 1999.¹ Then it closed.

Different sources record different end years: Digital Wasteland (Ye Xing-rou 2023) writes 1999; the Taiwan Gallery Certification Database (TAGA) writes 1992–1997; verymulan writes that Du Zhao-xian went to San Francisco after stepping down in 1997. The most reasonable integration is: Du Zhao-xian exited in 1997, New Ecological's core curatorial energy shifted accordingly, but the space maintained a weaker state until closing in 1999.¹⁸¹⁶

The timing of the closure coincided with the threshold of Taiwan's contemporary art "institutionalization": the NCFA's regular subsidies had just gotten on track, the first cohort of National Tainan University of Arts graduate students had just graduated, and the MOCA's idle space policy had just begun. New Ecological, as an "incubator before the birth of the subsidy structure," had completed its mission. It did not grow into a larger institution, but exited on time, handing the stage over to the subsequent government idle space policies and academic systems.

Post-2000s: New Ecological's Spores

For twenty years after New Ecological closed, the landscape of alternative spaces in Tainan was not empty. If you arrange Tainan's arts and culture spaces from this period, you will find that most are directly or indirectly related to New Ecological's DNA.

Du Zhao-xian herself extended to INART Gallery (2007), the Hae'an Road Art Street project (brewed in the 2000s, receiving the Special Jury Prize at the Taishin Art Awards in 2004), and B.B.ART (2012).¹³¹⁴¹⁷

The Haima Hui Guang Gallery (Marine Hippocampus Light Gallery), established in 2008, was led by photographers Chen Bo-yi, Wang Zheng-xiang, and other members, inheriting New Ecological's spirit of "cross-disciplinary composite," stuffing photography, books, video, and experimental music into the same space.¹⁸ Kaohsiung's Pier-2 (2002) and Qiaotou Sugar Factory (late 2000s) inherited the "idle space + art residency" policy model.

⚠️ Controversial Viewpoint
Describing New Ecological as "the source of all alternative spaces in Tainan" is a post-hoc organization. In reality, Tainan in the 1990s had more than one composite space besides New Ecological—there were also Du Zhao-xian's own Shi Bao Fang, extensions of the art gallery system, and various short-lived small spaces. New Ecological became a representative node partly because of its larger scale and longer duration, and partly because its curator remained active for thirty years, repeatedly narrating this history through subsequent space experiences. Historical representativeness is related to the survival rate of the narrator; this principle applies not only to New Ecological.

Why We Still Talk About This Seven-Year Space

In 2023, Digital Wasteland (No Man's Land) published Ye Xing-rou's long article "Alternative Space with Gallery as Leverage: New Ecological Art Environment in 1990s Tainan," bringing this refrigerated twenty-year story of 1990s Tainan back to the surface.¹ In the same year, the NCFA Archive released the research project results of Zazomu Art Studio's "Return of Alternative Spaces: Research on the Development of Early Arts Spaces in Tainan — 'Pioneer Culture' (1992–1995),"¹⁹ collecting manuscript diaries from members between 1992 and 1995, promotional materials for various exhibitions, photos of the second relocation space, photos of exhibitions and member activities, advertisements published at the time, reviews from newspapers and magazines, as well as transcripts of interviews with all members and audio-visual materials. This is the most complete academic回访 (return visit) archive for New Ecological to date.

Ye Xing-rou herself is a long-term author for Digital Wasteland; in 2023, "Alternative Space with Gallery as Leverage" was one of forty articles in her "Sound Scene" series, covering the archaeology of non-mainstream arts spaces in Taiwan from the 1990s to the 2020s. This series is considered the most complete secondary historical source integration of Taiwan's 1990s alternative space history. Her perspective on New Ecological leans toward methodological archaeology; the framework of "gallery as leverage" re-evaluated this case: treating the commercial gallery as a fulcrum to prop up a non-commercial arts ecosystem larger than the gallery itself. This perspective transformed New Ecological from "an alternative space that once existed" into "a historical case of methodology."

This wave of 2020s archaeology is not nostalgia. It is related to two phenomena in Taiwan's contemporary art today.

First, the subsidy structure of the NCFA and the Ministry of Culture has become increasingly complete in the 2020s; self-operated spaces find it increasingly difficult to operate outside the subsidy system: when subsidies become a condition for survival, alternative spaces outside the subsidy structure become endangered species. Looking back at New Ecological, we are not looking at how it survived, but at how it could operate for seven years without a subsidy structure.

Second, Tainan has recently become a new node for the southward movement of contemporary art due to tourism heat and urban renewal. Hae'an Road, Shennong Street, Blueprint, 321 Alley Art Cluster: these current Tainan arts landscapes can mostly be traced back to the old building at 138 Yongfu Road, Section 2 in 1992. A seven-year space, its spores have spread for thirty years.

From New Ecological's closure in 1999 to the present moment in 2026, the NCFA's regular subsidies have run for thirty years, the National Taiwan University of Arts has been open for thirty years, and the Railway Art Network has turned for twenty-six years. What the 1990s alternative spaces left behind has been absorbed into the system, and also into the city's memory.

The 400-plus ping old building is still at 138 Yongfu Road, Section 2, but the sign "New Ecological Art Environment" no longer hangs below the door number. But every time someone in Tainan wants to open a new space, wants to do cross-disciplinary composite operation, wants to survive outside the subsidy structure: what they do is essentially the same thing as what Du Zhao-xian did in that summer of 1992.

Seven years is so short, yet the spores have spread for thirty years. Next time you pass the old building on Section 2 of Yongfu Road, remember to look up at the second-floor windows: that floor was Tainan's first small theater in 1992, screened social movement documentaries in 1993, and connected with Eslite in 1996 for cross-city cross-genre experimental performances. No sign indicates that these things ever happened, but this is the historical landscape of Taiwan's contemporary art—it is not always in museums, it is also in an ordinary-looking old house on Yongfu Road.

Further Reading:

• Taiwan Contemporary Art — The overall context of Taiwan's contemporary art development after Martial Law; New Ecological is the representative node in Southern Taiwan during this period.
• Taiwan Curators and Art Culture Construction — The process of localization of the concept of curating in Taiwan in the 1990s; Zheng Ming-quan of New Ecological is one example.
• Taiwan New Media Art — In the same period, Huang Wen-hao extended from IT Park to create Local Experiment (ETAT); this is a parallel case from 1995.

Image Sources

At the time of shipping this article, no images were used. Exhibition site photos and exterior space photos of New Ecological Art Environment between 1992 and 1999 are currently extremely scarce in digitized data available publicly (mostly collected in the Digital Wasteland archive, the NCFA Zazomu Art Studio research project, and the Tainan Municipal Museum's 1990s Tainan Art Space archives; not on Wikimedia Commons). Images will be added if authorization is obtained in the future, per the REWRITE-PIPELINE Stage 4 Step 4.3 boundary exception clause for "no suitable media assets."

References