Artist Residencies in Taiwan
A curated guide to residency programs, production spaces, and research-based initiatives supporting contemporary art in Taiwan.
The residency model in Taiwan took shape largely through the reuse of contested or repurposed urban ground, and that origin still defines how many artists are hosted today. In Taipei, the Taipei Artist Village and Treasure Hill Artist Village—the latter built into a former hillside settlement above the river—place studios and living quarters inside a dense, lived-in fabric rather than a neutral facility. That proximity to everyday life shapes the work that emerges: research-based residencies here lean toward the documentary, the participatory, and the site-responsive, with open studios and public programs built into the cycle so that production stays legible to a local audience. Because municipal foundations and the Ministry of Culture underwrite much of this activity, the residency landscape carries an unusually public, infrastructural character, closely tied to the institutions and neighborhoods around it.
Beyond the capital, the system is genuinely distributed. In Kaohsiung, the Pier-2 Art Center occupies a stretch of disused harbor warehouses and folds studio programs into a larger production and exhibition complex, while initiatives across the south and east tie artistic research to specific landscapes and communities. The east coast has become a center for work developed alongside Indigenous Amis, Paiwan, and other communities, where a residency functions less as isolated studio time than as an extended period of relationship-building, material study, and site-specific making. Environmental and ecological questions run through many of these programs, from wetland and coastal projects to residencies attached to rural cultural parks. International artists arrive through reciprocal exchange agreements and curatorial fellowships that the country treats as a deliberate instrument of cultural exchange, sending Taiwanese practitioners abroad and hosting foreign ones in return. What emerges is less a catalogue of discrete programs than a network linking urban heritage sites, public institutions, and territorial research—one in which artist residencies in Taiwan remain inseparable from questions of land, memory, and belonging.
Selected Artist Residencies in Taiwan
A curated selection of residency programs supporting contemporary art production, research, and international exchange.
Artist-in-Residence Taipei (AIR Taipei)
Operated by the Taipei Culture Foundation under the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, AIR Taipei is now based at Treasure Hill Artist Village, a former hillside settlement by the Gongguan waterside. Three-month residencies embed domestic and international artists within an inhabited community, supporting site-responsive research, public programs, and open studios, alongside an overseas exchange track that sends Taiwanese practitioners to partner institutions abroad.
As Taipei's principal residency infrastructure since Taipei Artist Village's closure, it anchors the city's international exchange and links contemporary practice to a singular, historically layered urban site.
Pier-2 Art Center Artist-in-Residence Program (PAIR)
Launched in 2015 by Kaohsiung's Bureau of Cultural Affairs, the Pier-2 Artist-in-Residence Program occupies studios within the warehouse clusters of the Pier-2 Art Center, a former harbor industrial zone. It hosts around twenty-five to thirty local and international artists annually, requiring projects that engage Kaohsiung's landscape and social history and culminate in exhibitions, open studios, and public-facing presentations.
It is southern Taiwan's most established art-center residency, tying production to a regenerated port district and extending Kaohsiung's reach into international and interdisciplinary contemporary art networks.
Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB)
Initiated in 2018 by the Taiwan Living Arts Foundation under the Ministry of Culture, C-LAB occupies the former Air Force Command Headquarters in central Taipei. Its CREATORS program supports creation- and research-based projects across visual art, sound, and technology, providing studios, technical facilities such as the Taiwan Sound Lab, and exhibition platforms for cross-disciplinary experimentation and international exchange.
It functions as Taiwan's flagship state-backed laboratory for experimental and technological practice, positioning research-driven production at the center of the national contemporary art infrastructure.
AIR in Tainan – Soulangh Cultural Park
Run by the Tainan City Government Cultural Affairs Bureau, the AIR in Tainan program hosts artists at Soulangh Cultural Park and the Tsung-Yeh Arts and Cultural Center, both converted from Japanese-era sugar industry sites. Operating through themed annual open calls, it supports site-specific production rooted in local history and agriculture, with residents required to stage exhibitions and lead community workshops or open studios.
It distributes Taiwan's residency map southward, embedding contemporary practice within Tainan's industrial heritage and rural communities through structured themes of local memory, material, and place.
Embassy of Foreign Artists
Embassy of Foreign Artists is a Geneva-based international residency program welcoming artists, cultural actors, researchers, and collectives with logistical and financial support. Its recent Art and Science cycle connects artistic research with laboratories and academic partners, positioning residency time as a framework for cross-disciplinary production, collaboration, and dissemination within Geneva’s unusually dense scientific and diplomatic environment.
It brings Geneva’s research institutions into the residency field, making art-science exchange part of Switzerland’s contemporary art infrastructure.
Stiftung BINZ39 Atelier Residency
Stiftung BINZ39’s Atelier Residency provides seven working studios in Zurich for Swiss visual artists at an early or decisive stage of their careers. The two-year format is not residential housing, but it offers sustained studio time, mentoring, open-studio events, curatorial support, a final exhibition, and access to the foundation’s local network and infrastructure.
Its long studio cycle supports artistic development inside Zurich, foregrounding continuity and peer exchange over short-term mobility within the local art ecosystem.
This is a curated selection of residency programs. Explore the broader contemporary art ecosystem of Taiwan.
Back to Taiwan overview