Island Tales: A Collaboration in Motion

Contemporary ArtArt & CulturePublic ArtFashionDesign

2 Sept

What happens when calligraphy, public art, and textile design meet on an island at once ancient and futuristic? 2026 Island Tales Collection is less a collection of scarves than an unfolding collaboration, one that invites artists, travelers, and wearers into the same conversation.

Strictly Limited Edition Scarf Collaboration YEN TING CHO x Tong Yang-tze. Island Spirit. Photo: © YEN TING CHO Studio 2025

At its core stands Tong Yang-tze (b.1942), Taiwan’s celebrated calligrapher, whose work for The Met’s 2025 Great Hall Commission has already placed her in dialogue with global audiences. In Island Tales, her brushstrokes migrate from paper into fabric — gesture becoming texture, word becoming form.

Find out more about Taiwan master calligrapher Tong Yang-tse in this portrait from The Met Museum, New York:

Equally present is the monumental airport installation at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport (2025), whose seven large-scale patterns now shift into intimate scale. This movement, from public space to wearable art, captures the tension between permanence and transience, between the collective and the personal.

The collaboration does not illustrate Taiwan; it inhabits it. Mountain ranges, oceans, and digital networks are not motifs but forces shaping the work. Together, these artists transform landscapes and languages into shared symbols, honoring an island’s resilience while speaking to a global community.

YEN TING CHO Studio is currently finalizing a major public commission for the new T3 Taoyuan Airport, Taiwan. Spanning over 300 meters in length, ‘Gateway to Taiwan: Island Tales', is the Studio’s largest public commission to date. Divided into seven parts, the artwork merges traditional heritage and contemporary tech, and is inspired by Taiwan’s natural and urban landscapes, culture and industry. The art work is being installed during August and September, 2025.

YEN TING CHO Studio Artworks and Projects: https://www.yentingchostudio.com/projects/gateway-to-taiwan-island-tales

YEN TING CHO Studio website: https://yentingcho.com/pages/2026-island-tales-collection

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yentingcho/