A new art fair is taking over a small Taiwanese town instead of a convention centre. A Ma De Jia 2026, announced this week, will run from 11 to 20 December in Xiluo, a historic market town in Yunlin County, with sixteen galleries showing work inside nine old houses and heritage spaces along Yanping Old Street.

The fair's founder, Michelle Hsieh of Xie Xie Art Consulting, grew up in Xiluo and says the project began with her own family history: after her grandfather died, she found herself looking again at the town's old buildings, which she had once dismissed as dull. The fair takes its name from the Taiwanese idea of a grandmother's house — a place of warmth and welcome — and asks what an art fair can leave behind in the place that hosts it.

Local support has shaped the event. The 118-year-old soy sauce maker Maruzhuang is the main sponsor and will open its factory on the old street as a venue and party space, while the Luoyang Cultural and Educational Foundation helped secure the nine historic houses, including the Xiluo Ecology Museum. Galleries will install work to fit each building's scale, light and materials rather than using standard booths, and the programme includes collector tours, cultural walks and local experiences.

The exhibitor list mixes Taiwanese galleries such as YIRI ARTS, PTT Space and Hiro Hiro Art Space with international names including Ben Brown Fine Arts, Rossi & Rossi, Kiang Malingue, Hanart TZ Gallery, Capsule Shanghai, HdM Gallery and Tabula Rasa Gallery. Highlights include new work by Geng Jiesheng and Lin Shih-yong's Banana Man paintings at YIRI ARTS, and a survey of New York painter Emily Cheng at Hanart TZ. The organisers say they hope the fair will give residents pride in their hometown, encourage young people to stay in Yunlin, and eventually travel to a different Taiwanese county each year.