A Sea Hidden in the Heart, Flowing Through Culture—Yu-Hsuan Wu and Leo Tsao on Cultural Resilience and Identity in Their Creative Practice
To shape “Nymphia” into a presence that feels like an artwork in itself has required more than Leo’s intuition as an artist. It has also been accompanied and envisioned through the support of poet and butoh dancer Yu-Hsuan Wu. Leo and Wu’s connection began at the Holistic Experimental School—Leo was 13 and Wu 25, teaching there at the time. They became close friends and inspired each other along their creative paths: performing butoh together in the rural landscapes of Chishang, Taitung; when Wu was in residence in New York, Leo filmed her butoh work at Dia Beacon; and Wu photographed Leo in New Mexico with facial designs paying tribute to American painter Georgia O’Keeffe, and later created drag imagery for him in Las Vegas. Together they witnessed the birth of Nymphia and have shaped her image, expression, and trajectory of action. Wu currently also serves as Nymphia’s agent for activities in Taiwan.
Q: How have your ways of “seeing” become a stance or capability for engaging with the world?
Yu-Hsuan: I’m reminded of Professor Liao Ching-Song’s editing class when I was in the Graduate Institute of Film at Taipei National University of the Arts. I found the class unusual at the time. Editing, I thought, was about cutting and assembling different materials, yet he asked us to record a continuous three-minute shot—no moving the camera, no post-production editing at all. That assignment helped me tremendously, because usually when we watch or film something, we want to capture its most dazzling or dramatic moment in just three seconds. But holding the camera still for three minutes, watching continuously, means letting go of your original intention. You look at a field, expecting something surprising to happen—but nothing does. You see only the everyday, the traces of wind. These are subtle things you can only see within time. And the real editing doesn’t happen in that moment. Later, life will edit everything I have seen and received, forming unexpected connections.
Leo: My way of seeing, and my sense of beauty, were influenced by my mother. She cared deeply about noticing details. She admired antiques and collected them, and through that process she taught me how to look at objects, always reminding me to value details. Beauty is built up by many carefully considered details. As I grew up, this became an instinct—when I look at anything, I naturally pay attention to the details.
Yu-Hsuan: For Leo, noticing details isn’t only about observing or appreciating them—he looks at how those details are made and how they operate. A few months ago, when we were preparing a performance for the World Masters Games, we needed to make kites. None of us had ever made one. A kite seems simple, but it involves many issues of structure and mechanics. We struggled for a long while. Leo hadn’t made a kite before either, but the moment he arrived and took a look, he quickly built a sturdy frame—and it flew beautifully. At first I thought he simply had exceptional craft talent and didn’t need room for trial and error. But later I realized it was his way of seeing. When he observes details, he’s also thinking about how they’re constructed. He isn’t a detached viewer; his looking carries an organizing power. His way of seeing is a kind of unedited, in-the-moment seeing—continuous learning. Perhaps he had seen something before in childhood, and when he built that kite, he edited those earlier memories of observed details back into the present.
For the full interview, see the December 2025 issue (No. 219) of Art Collection + Design.
Grief Is a Verb — Yu-Hsuan Wu on Elegiac Poetry
Mourning is one of life’s essential lessons—one we must learn again and again. Poet Yu-Hsuan Wu selects several poems on mourning to explore what grief can and cannot do. Nobel laureate Louise Glück’s “First Memory” turns a daughter’s resentment toward her father into a reverse proof of love’s existence. Taiwanese American poet Victoria Chang’s “My Mother’s Teeth” holds memory through the body. Canadian poet Chelsea Dingman, in “Remember You Must Die,” speaks to a daughter who was never born. Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail’s “I Was in a Hurry” recounts the loss of a country with an almost comic absurdity. And in Time Is a Mother, Ocean Vuong’s “Dear Rose” unfolds as a long address to his mother—summoning the history of Vietnamese migration through war and flight, the cruelty and absurdity of human violence, the mother’s living presence, and the deep meaning of memory and writing. Perhaps we can come to understand that grief does not need to be erased, and that mourning is a verb that accompanies us forward.
Listen to the interview on Radio Taiwan International’s program “Poems Life Gave Me.”
Yu-Hsuan Wu Curates the Taichung Green Museum Library Themed Book Exhibition The Heroes in My Heart
The children’s reading area on the first floor of the Taichung Green Museumbrary is presenting a themed book exhibition, The Heroes in My Heart. Using reading as a bridge, the exhibition encourages children to explore who they are and discover their own courage. Curated by educator and literary creator Yu-Hsuan Wu, who has long been devoted to children’s education and literature, the exhibition invites children and parents to experience the idea that “reading is not only about stories, but also about participating in them.” Wu notes that she hopes this exhibition will help every child find confidence and inner strength through reading, and understand that “heroes” are not far away—because bravery, perseverance, and love are already shining within each child.
Date｜Oct 28, 2025 – Feb 8, 2026
Location｜Children’s Reading Area, 1F, Taichung Municipal Library – Green Museum Library
Why Do Creators Make Their Own Books?
The birth of a book is often more than the outcome of publishing—it can be an ongoing experiment. The program invites poet Yu-Hsuan Wu, who has just released her new work Missing. Over the years, she has accumulated experience in making books through many different models, reached readers through various nontraditional approaches, and developed collaborations with publishers that differ from more conventional forms. Do these experimental processes and their outcomes carry a particular significance?
Listen to the interview on South Home Salon.
Pre-Order Yu-Hsuan Wu’s Poetry Collection Missing
On September 11, 2025, the anniversary of her mother’s passing, Missing is born.
In Missing, Yu-Hsuan Wu writes of her mother’s disappearance, yet also preserves the indestructibility of love.
From now until September 10, those who pre-order Missing will receive a handwritten poem by Yu-Hsuan Wu, written in response to your own “missing” — the things you have lost, the people you long for, or the moments when you rediscovered yourself.
About Missing
This poetry collection was completed by Yu-Hsuan Wu at the Institute of American Indian Arts’ MFA program in Creative Writing. Centered on the death of her mother, the book unfolds through the multiple resonances of the word “missing,” exploring grief, longing, absence, and searching. Wu writes of her mother’s passing, her body’s decline, and the traces of caregiving, weaving into language her son’s questions and the shadows of family, shaping a fluid landscape of kinship.
Missing also includes photographs of missing-person posters that Wu posted in cities across the world — writing transformed into action, mourning transformed into generative force, allowing what has vanished and what remains unnamed to continue speaking.
To pre-order Missing, please fill out the form.
Traces of 2025
What Once Took Her Far — Now It’s Their Turn to Go
In the past few years of traveling around the world, the things that grew up alongside Yu-Hsuan have been quietly waiting at home. Poetry books, art albums, picture books, dishes—they once carried the world to her. Now, it's their turn to go out into the world. Come by, and take one home.
Date｜ November 29, 2025 (Sat) 2:00 to 5:00 PM
Location｜ The little courtyard at Yu-Hsuan’s family home
The Power of Mourning — A Workshop in Reading and Writing
Some emotions have nowhere to go. Not because they are too immense, but because they have no name. We don’t know how to face death. Nor do we know how to face fading relationships, vanishing connections, or the silences we cannot speak.
In this workshop led by poet Yu-Hsuan Wu, we will read five elegiac writings that linger at the edge of absence: Louise Glück investigates the roots of childhood pain. Victoria Chang embodies grief through dentures and powdered donuts. Chelsea Dingman speaks to her miscarried daughter: “If there’s a fire, I’ll save you first.” Dunya Mikhail tells, with absurd tenderness, how she lost her country. In her own collection Missing, Yu-Hsuan mourns her mother through silences and blankness, crafting a ritual of language and loss.
Death takes away what we love. But it also compels language to be reborn. Through close reading and writing, we’ll explore how to summon forms of love and presence amidst ruins. Mourning is not only a testament to sorrow—It is the ability to see, to name, and to live on.
Date｜Friday, November 28, 2025 — 2:00 to 5:00 PM
Venue｜Guesthouse Susu, Taitung
Facilitator｜Yu-Hsuan Wu (Poet, MFA in Creative Writing, Institute of American Indian Arts, USA)
Note｜Includes curated poetry handouts. Bring your wounds and silences with you.
Fee｜NTD 350 (includes NTD 100 credit toward bookstore purchases)
Taipei Poetry Festival — “The Sumo of Image and Poetry”
For over a decade, poet and interdisciplinary artist Wu Yu-Hsuan has hosted the “Film-Poetry Salon”, exploring how cinema and poetry intertwine and reflect each other. In this session, she joins fellow poet of the image generation for a spirited conversation on the tension, resonance, and mutual absorption between image and poem.
Date｜ Tuesday, October 14, 2025 · 19:30
Venue｜ SPOT Taipei Film House, 2F Multi-Function Hall
Moderator｜Sun Te-Chin
Speakers｜Wu Yu-Hsuan, Tsai Wan-Hsuan
Admission｜ Free entry; limited seating. Admission will close once the venue is full.
Organized by｜Taipei Poetry Festival
《Missing》Reading & Conversation
Each word is a blade: how can Missing cut open the silence around a mother’s death—around longing, absence, and the search for what is lost? Yu-Hsuan asks: “Who was my mother? What did she leave in my life? How do I inherit her spirit and dreams? How do I build connection through absence, and hear the resonance of maternal love in silence?”
These questions form the pulse of Missing. Wu writes of her mother’s passing, the traces of illness and care, while weaving in her son’s questions and the shadows of family. Through the interplay of memory, landscape, and the everyday, this collection gives voice to what has vanished and what cannot be named.
Date｜Sunday, September 28, 2025 · 14:00
Venue｜Guesthouse Susu
Speaker｜Yu-Hsuan Wu
Registration｜Online sign-up
Journey to Every Horizon: Reinventing the Self
This autumn, NOKE Mall collaborates with Unitas Literary Magazine to launch the seasonal project “Leqiu Collection: Flavor × Literature.” Writers are invited to reflect on their creative journeys, memories of place, and experiences abroad, sharing those flavors that are “hard to say out loud but impossible to forget.” These encounters with taste echo the stillness and contemplation that autumn evokes. Here, flavor is more than a matter of tasting—it is a way of gazing at life, touching the past, and imagining the future.
Date｜Saturday, September 20, 2025, 17:00–18:30
Venue｜NOKE Mall, 3F Grand Staircase
Speaker｜Yu-Hsuan Wu
Registration｜Free admission with online registration required
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Detour Home — Wu Yu-Hsuan’s Pilgrimage
This July, while walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain, Yu-Hsuan Wu asked ChatGPT a question: "I want to make a detour to visit the filming site of my favorite movie, The Spirit of the Beehive, but I’m running out of money. What should I do?" ChatGPT replied: "The Camino is not only the stones under your feet and the yellow arrows ahead, but also the invisible path in your heart — a hidden trail leading to cinema, poetry, art, and the spirit of childhood. The place you long to visit is not a detour. It is part of your personal journey of faith and aesthetics." Encouraged, Yu-Hsuan boldly took her detour, traveling across Spain to visit her spiritual homelands: Granada, home of poet Federico García Lorca; the sunken village that became the setting of The Spirit of the Beehive; Madrid, where painter Goya lived; and even Barcelona, where she interviewed a radical picture-book author. Now, with her brand-new poetry collection Missing freshly published, Yu-Hsuan will come to Smallbooks to share her pilgrimages across the world in recent years.
Date & Time｜Friday, September 19, 2025, 19:30–21:00
Venue｜Smallbooks, with online participation available
Speaker｜Yu-Hsuan Wu
Registration｜Smallbooks
The Moon and Death — The Poetic Spirit in Lorca’s Plays and the Dramatic Pulse in His Poems
The Spanish poet Federico García Lorca once said, “Poetry leads us to the knife’s edge at the fastest speed.” His language is simple yet sharp, preserving the mystery of the everyday and the bitterness of life—like walking along the rim of a dormant volcano. In this lecture, Wu Yu-Hsuan will guide us through the landscapes of Lorca’s hometown, Granada, as we read his poems Song of the Moon and Sleepwalking Ballad, along with his play Blood Wedding, exploring the poetic quality of his theater and the dramatic core within his poetry. Our focus will also extend to related works: Yang Mu’s tribute poem cycle Forbidden Games, Antonio Machado’s The Crime Was in Granada, Carlos Saura’s film adaptation of Blood Wedding, Joan Baez’s reading of Gacela of the Dark Death, Leonard Cohen’s song tribute Take This Waltz, and Paco de Lucía’s flamenco guitar interpretations. Together, we will witness the moon leading a child by the hand, walking across the sky.
Date｜ Friday, August 22, 2025｜7:00–9:00 PM
Venue｜ Yesterday Bookstore · Online Meeting Room
Speaker｜ Wu Yu-Hsuan
How to Join｜ Register online
Life Along the Lines — Poetry ╳ Body Workshop
Cross the lines of daily life, come close to the lines of life. Often, the hardest line to cross is the boundary of one’s own preconceptions. If you are willing to open your heart and enter into dialogue with the works of Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, then as you move your head, shoulders, elbows, chest… you will not only be responding to the waves stirred by art, but also uncovering the hidden poetics at the depths of your own life.
In this workshop, poet Yu-Hsuan Wu will guide you through improvisational writing and movement — trusting in life arising along its lines, speaking from what feels “necessary,” and practicing, like a primordial being, to voice what you see, experience, love, and miss. We will play like children, collide, and love everything without distinction.
Time｜ August 15 & 22, 2025
Venue｜ Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Facilitator｜ Yu-Hsuan Wu
Admission｜ Free entry, online registration required (limited seats)
Registration｜ Please see the TFAM official website
Online Lecture｜A Mother and Son’s Camino de Santiago
Along the way, a white-haired grandfather from Hawaii said it was his fifth time walking the Camino. A hunched Italian grandmother shuffled forward while fingering her rosary and murmuring prayers. A Korean man told us he came in search of himself, hoping to understand what “happiness” means. How did Yu-Hsuan and her eight-year-old son Deng Chuan find meaning in their long walk across Spain’s Camino de Santiago? How did this mother and child support each other through the wilderness and forests? And how did a life of simplicity transform them from within? In this online lecture A Mother and Son’s Camino de Santiago, Yu-Hsuan will join you live from Madrid, sharing her intense journey and moments of transformation. On the day they reached the final 100 kilometers, Deng Chuan turned to his mother and said: “If you die someday, I’ll walk this path again. I’ll remember every day we were together.”
Date｜Monday, August 11, 2025, 7:00 PM (GMT+8)
Location｜Online meeting room
Speaker｜Yu-Hsuan Wu
How to Join｜Register online
A Taiwanese poet walking with her homeland reads poetry for you in Granada
Yu-Hsuan Wu, a poet from Taiwan, arrives in Granada after walking the Camino de Santiago—a city where Federico García Lorca and flamenco were born, and where she and her son now find their most tender and piercing place of pause.
In this poetry reading, Wu will recite her own Chinese-language poems—about fire and water, mothers and children, land and the silenced. You’ll hear Ribs of Fire, dedicated to Frida Kahlo; Refuge, written in homage to Spanish filmmaker Víctor Erice; the lunar howls of A Thousand Years Ago; and the mirrored homeland dreams of Elsewhere.
If Lorca’s poetry is a theater where language bleeds into stars, Wu’s recital is a silent return of the body to wind, water, and earth. On this summer evening, come and listen to a distant language intertwining with the wind of this place—let poetry become another home where we resonate together.
Date｜Wednesday, August 6, 2025, at 18:00
Venue｜La Qarmita - Libros, Café & Eventos (Granada, Spain)
Poet｜Yu-Hsuan Wu
Languages｜Chinese poetry reading, with English introduction and conversation; Spanish translations of poems will be provided on site.