This dissertation used the "Imagined Communities” as the spiritual indicator of the regional production of Taiwan’s contemporary transcendent arts. The contemporary art has developed rapidly after the lifting of martial law in Taiwan, and artistic works with transcendent aesthetics have become an important cultural symbol of Taiwan in the international art world. The term "Transcendent Arts" is an important aesthetic concept proposed in this thesis. "Transcendent" refers to the perception that transcends experience and the mysterious or sacred world beyond experience. As far as the elements of the transcendent worlds are concerned, Taiwan is mostly composed of immigrant population living with traditional beliefs from native land, the traditional beliefs from Fujian and Guangdong including Nuo culture, Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism and Christian belief. Through visible statues of Gods and Buddha, totem, Psychics, Dharma Tools, Rituals, Churches and Temples, which construct the supernatural being, invisible rules, taboos, spirits, Bardo, ghosts, sacredness and afterlife that build up Taiwan's transcendent worlds.
The religious diversity lie in the Taiwan’s society, such as the ancestor worship, sea gods of traditional beliefs, and the Christian beliefs that began in the Age of Discovery, which form the symbolism of religious cultures in Taiwan. The majority of Taiwan’s social population originated from immigrants of Fujian and Guangdong, and their traditional beliefs have become the main trend of the transcendent world. Nevertheless, the beliefs of the ancestral spirits have the longest histories of the Austronesian peoples on this island, and the western missionaries who brought the Christian belief by the time as the main land immigration upsurged. These histories have played a mutual role via the transcendent cultural subjects. These three lines of religious cultures have transcended the influence of political regimes for more than 400 years. When Taiwanese face the dilemma and division of identities, religion is often regarded as a regional power for collective identity.
Taiwan's contemporary transcendent arts absorb nutrients from the transcendent worlds, through the transcendent approaches, including Double exposure and Ghost images to create regional transcendent aesthetics, combining fragmented identities and provide solutions to post-colonialism. This dissertation aims to analyze the structure of Taiwan’s transcendent cultures and related arts praxis, and find out the cultural value of Taiwan’s contemporary transcendent arts and the ideologies behind its expression, and identifying the roles played by the "Mythological Vacuum" and "Reenchantment" on the issues of decolonization in Asia. In terms of the scope, mainly focus on these three local beliefs systems: the belief in the holy spirit and ancestral spirits of Austronesian peoples, the traditional beliefs of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism of the Han peoples, and the Christian belief of the Han peoples. The studies focus on Artists from these three realms, verifying how they reproduce, re-narrative, survey, map, deconstruct and reconstruct the contexts via transcendent formats that compose cultural symbol and Imagined Communities of Taiwan.