Reshoot to Reconstruct
A solo exhibition by Su Hui-yu
Curated by Tessa Maria Guazon
March 21 to May 2026
UP Vargas Museum | Lobby and West Wing Gallery
(University of the Philippines Jorge B. Vargas Museum and Filipiniana Research Center)
Taiwanese artist Su Hui-yu (b. 1976, based in Taipei) restages four moving image projects in a forthcoming exhibition at the UP Vargas Museum. These are The Trio Hall (2023), The Women’s Revenge (2020), The Space Warriors and the Digigrave (2025), and Future Shock (2019). In this iteration, Su presents anew the lush, vibrant theaters of his narratives — bending bodies, places, and times with satirical humor sharpened by a gesture best described as speculative.
The structure of Su’s worlds is sprawling, far-reaching both into the past and the future, yet immediate and present because of their immersive, dense qualities. Variedly described as site-specific, multi-media, and a film-making project, Su calls The Trio Hall, for example, “a cinematic exhibition,” or “an exhibition cinema…a place of audio-visual production.” These works explore mass media, pop culture, and the postcolonial histories of Taiwan and East Asia through an aesthetic strategy and historical reframing or tactic the artist calls “reshooting.” To reshoot is to excavate narratives and memories, collect and restage objects and images, reframe and recast periods of repression and censorship through filmic language and formats that are simultaneously grand in scope, seductively flamboyant, bordering on the fantastic, and consistently vexing the lines between reality and make-believe. The time-worlds of Su Hui-yu’s works are provocative, unsettling, and disjointed, inviting us to enter them over and over with newly formed and reinvented identities.
The exhibition formally opens to the public on Saturday, March 21, 2026, at 4 PM. It will be on view until May 2026, end date to be confirmed. The exhibition received support from Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture.
Learning About Art Series
Contemporary Art at the Vargas
Session 2 (2026)
A guided walkthrough of the exhibition Reshoot to Reconstruct
April 8, 10, and 15
Register to participate, bit.ly/UPVMLearningArtSession2.
The UP Vargas Museum invites general education classes in the arts (Arts 1, for example)to join the second session for our series, Learning About Art: Contemporary Art at the Vargas on any of the following dates: APRIL 8, 10 & 15, 2026. The second learning session is a guided walkthrough of our current contemporary exhibition, Reshoot to Reconstruct by Taiwanese artist, Su Hui-Yu.
The walkthrough will guide students of Arts 1 (Critical Perspectives in the Arts) and similar classes to experience new media works including video, short film, and video installation, with a curious eye, a sensing body, and a questioning mind. This approach aligns with the learning goals of honing aesthetic awareness, developing visual literacy and encouraging reflexive thinking.
About the artist
Su Hui-yu’s works have been presented in museums, exhibitions, and festivals such as MOCA Taipei, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Kaoshiung Museum of Fine Arts, Bangkok Arts and Culture Center, Kunsthalle Winterthur (Switzerland), San Jose Museum of Art (California), Curitiba International Biennial of Contemporary Art (Brazil), 1646 Art Space (Netherlands), and Power Station (Shanghai). His films and video art have screened at events including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, Singapore International Film Festival, Videonale (Germany), PERFORMA (New York), and RISING (Melbourne). Recent exhibitions include The Trio Hall at MOCA Taipei (2023), 1972, Toffler at Double Square Gallery Taipei (2022), The Cinema of Séance at 1646 in The Hague (2021), and Trio Hall at MAMBO (Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá) in 2025, curated by Eugenio Viola.
About the Museum
The University of the Philippines Jorge B. Vargas Museum and Filipiniana Research Center is a center for Philippine art and culture with research, curation, and education as its core thrusts. The Museum is home to collections of art, books, archives, memorabilia, coins, and stamps from Jorge B. Vargas, a significant political figure in the twentieth-century Philippines and an alumnus of the University of the Philippines. An avid collector with a vision of sharing Philippine art with future generations, Jorge Vargas donated the holdings he acquired across his illustrious career in public service, sports, and scouting to his alma mater in 1978. Since its opening in 1987, the UP Vargas Museum has been visited by students, researchers, scholars, and the general public. The Museum has galleries for permanent, long-term, and temporary exhibitions. The galleries also serve as spaces for educational events, including workshops, lectures, symposia, walkthroughs, and talks by artists and curators. The library accommodates researchers, scholars, students, and artists; it also hosts small exhibitions within its spaces.
