My work is about perception.
About looking inward, about watching how I think.

For me, a work is an entrance, not a destination.
I try to leave space within the work—
space for the viewer to enter.

Sometimes, a veil lifts.
Sometimes, a boundary quietly disappears.

The experience can extend beyond the work,
into the viewer’s own awareness.

I hope my work can be like a breeze,
gently lifting a leaf that blocks the view.
For a moment,
something that seemed fixed begins to shift.


I have no answer to offer.
What happens next belongs to the viewer.











Mao Tao works across installation, moving image, photography, and painting. He has lived in China and Japan and currently lives and works in Paris.

He hopes his work will create conditions for awareness to emerge, allowing established ways of understanding and a perspective centred on the subject to loosen their hold. He calls some of these moments zhaojian (照见)—a lived experience that takes shape with the viewer. In this encounter, matter, time, space, and the viewer together give rise to a presence that no single narrative can claim as its own.

Non-dual awareness and self-reflection run through his practice. His questioning of certainty is directed both towards the external world and back towards the viewer. These inquiries take form in works that often unfold in series and take shape gradually over time. They grow out of life and remain open to experiences yet to come.

He studied at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing, and the Beaux-Arts de Paris.

His work has been shown at Jousse Entreprise, the Atelier Brancusi (Centre Pompidou), and Nuit Blanche in Paris; the De Renava Art Biennale in Bonifacio; Hiroshima Art Document in Hiroshima; soco1010 in Tokyo; Taikang Space in Beijing; Central Saint Martins in London; and MICA in the United States.

Trait de mémoire
Dans le cadre de l’exposition TECH CARE, hommage à la pensée de Bernard Stiegler, Trait de mémoire retrace, par le dessin, la courbe d’un visage et le fil d’une pensée.
L’œuvre s’inscrit dans le prolongement possible de « Mémoires du futur », exposition proposée par le philosophe au Centre Pompidou en 1987. Elle ouvre un passage entre passé et présent, mémoire et devenir, afin d’interroger les métamorphoses du psychisme à l’époque des algorithmes.
TECH CARE réunit 9 artistes autour de 11 œuvres au 6b, du 18 avril au 9 mai 2024.