The physical fatigue of migration has gradually internalized into a kind of everyday condition, while the psychological displacement and emotional delay serve as latent energy sources for her artistic practice. During her residency in New York in 2025, her sensory experiences of space, language, and identity coalesced into the core of this exhibition, Still Here.

The title Still Here is both a declaration of existence and a lingering form of self-inquiry. In one of the world’s fastest-paced cities, “still here” is more than a statement of physical presence—it reflects a psychological and existential state in the face of uncertain identities, migratory memories, and questions of cultural belonging. As artist Christo once said: “In New York, everyone speaks English with an accent.” In this city of linguistic diversity and cultural dislocation, everyone is both an outsider and, in some sense, a New Yorker.

The works respond to the urban texture and immigrant history of Manhattan’s Chinatown, drawing on the neighborhood’s visual signals, community narratives, and layered sense of time. They explore how postcolonialism and transnational capital shape the transformation of social landscapes. At the same time, the exhibition centers on the story of a beluga whale named Angel, housed at Taiwan’s National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium in Pingtung. Her story raises questions about the ethics of non-human life, systems of captivity, and human-centric interventions in nature.

Angel, imported from Russia in 2002 and long held in captivity, is now one of only three surviving belugas at the museum. Her existence becomes a metaphor for how nature is shaped by institutional frameworks. Once part of public performances that were later discontinued due to growing animal welfare awareness, Angel’s life is marked by systemic tension and ethical dilemmas.

Hsu transforms Angel’s headless, tailless body into street art in Chelsea, inserting the image into public urban space. Through this visual intervention, the observed animal becomes a symbol of observer and witness. The full image can only be seen onsite or through Instagram, prompting critical questions about digital visual culture and conditions of display: Who is allowed to see? How do we see? Does seeing imply possession? The artist interrogates the dynamics between visibility, power, and presence.

Drawing from her cross-cultural background and multilingual fluency, Hsu Szu-Ying’s practice reflects both deep local engagement and international perspective. Her work navigates the intersections of personal memory and collective history, with a focus on the ethics of coexisting with non-human life.

Still Here is both an observation of contemporary urban experience and a deep reflection on states of being, migratory memory, and cultural belonging. Through open-ended narratives and multimedia strategies, the exhibition expresses not only the condition of “being here” but also the cultural and ethical posture of “still being here”—resisting erasure, pushing back against disappearance.

Still Here is an exhibition that continues to speak. It is a poetic inquiry into migration, resistance, and existence. In this dislocated, intersecting terrain called New York, the artist begins with her own experience to reframe how we understand and imagine where we are.\

Hsu Szu-Ying, born in Taiwan, earned her BFA from the Taipei National University of the Arts and later completed a Meisterschüler (master class) degree in fine arts in Germany. Her practice continuously moves between Taiwan and Germany, establishing a creative path that bridges East Asia and Europe. Within this ongoing journey of geographic movement and cultural translation, the central questions that drive her work have become: “Where am I?” and “How do I exist?”

Szu-Ying Hsu is a Taiwanese contemporary multimedia artist who works with video, installation and photography. Hsu’s artwork challenges both the limits of the viewer and the very definition of art. Through thought-provoking works, Hsu offers a profound ecological reflection on contemporary society, presented in a philosophical and poetic manner.

Bringing a white rhino from the prestigious Victoria & Albert museum to the busy Bank Street area in London; creating a thin porcelain armor that can only be seen on the opening night of the exhibition; displaying damaged armor in a museum showcase, in violation of the convention: Hsu reveals her hopes, humiliations, failures and successes in candid, at times, excoriating work that is frequently both tragic and humorous as she seeks to challenge and redefine the positioning and value of artworks in the contemporary art ecology and the hearts of viewers. Objects that may appear spectacular on the outside, under their layers of packaging, could be empty or hollow.

Hsu’s works have been shown in various exhibitions and film festivals, such as the Internationalen Kurz Film Festival Hamburg (Germany), Mönchehaus Museum Goslar (Germany), the 29th Stuttgarter Filmwinter festival for Expanded Media (Germany), Moving Silence Festival Athens (Greece), Braunschweig International Film Festival (Germany), the 28th and 26th European Media Art Festival (Germany), Borderline-Mirrorlike, the Interaction Exhibition of Independent Young Artists of Taiwan and Israel (Taiwan and Israel), Taipei International Modern Ink Painting Biennale (Taiwan), and her work Klanghaut 3.0 was invited to be performed at the Sprengel Museum, Hannover (Germany) in 2021. She graduated from HBK Braunschweig, Germany in 2018. Szu-Ying Hsu lives and works in Berlin, Germany.