The Living Archive of Endangered Crafts

It all began with bamboo: an ancient, once-ubiquitous material now nearly forgotten in a world captivated by synthetic perfection. But in the hands of Taiwanese artist Cheng Tsung Feng, bamboo is not a gesture of nostalgia. It is a medium for the future.

Trained in contemporary design but instinctively drawn to older ways of making, Feng stepped away from the fast-churning currents of trends. Where most see heritage as something to be antiquated, Feng sees it as a source of creativity. He left the studio, moved into the hills, and began again, learning with his hands, watching, and asking questions. In remote villages across Taiwan, he discovered knowledge not written down, but passed on through unwritten practice: how to bend rattan, how to join wood without nails, how to read a material by touch alone.

Feng does not approach these ancient crafts as relics to be only displayed behind glass. Instead, he reinterprets and distills the essence of these ancient techniques—their methods, their forms, their internal logic—into sculptural installations of contemporary scale.