Wu Mali received her undergraduate degree in German language and literature in 1979 at Tamkang University in Taipei. She continued her studies in Germany and graduated from the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf in 1986 before returning to Taipei to begin a life as a full-time artist. Representing Taiwan in 1995 at the 46th Venice Biennial with the installation Library, she started to become known on the international stage. Subsequently, her work was exhibited at the Bonn Women’s Museum (1998), Taipei Museum of Fine Arts (1998) and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (1998–1999).
Wu’s socially engaged art aims to educate and bring people together to make a better place for themselves and their community. Guided by this mission, she has experimented with different materials while exhibiting works in various types of spaces and venues. From making textile-based works (Awakening from Your Skin, 2000), gathering groups of women to make bed sheets (Bed Sheets of Soul, 2001) or restoring the environment (By the River, on the River, of the River – A Community Based Eco-Art Project, 2006) to curating large-scale exhibitions and organising community events, Wu continuously seeks to create spaces that address contemporary issues at the intersections of the human world and nature, feminism and global geopolitics, and locality and globality.

After the 1990s, she shifted to creating works both inside and outside of the gallery and museum settings. Art as Environment—A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek (2011) was a holistic project that integrated the revitalisation of community, farming and ecological knowledge in Taipei’s northern suburb, Zhuwei. There, Wu had monthly breakfasts with the local community to discuss the different aspects of life in Plum Tree Creek. From these conversations, Wu branched into the creation of local school programmes, theatre, dance, and fostered the sharing of indigenous farming practices throughout the community. In 2013 the project won Taiwan’s highest art award – the Taishin Arts Award.

In addition to her art projects, she organised the edited volume Art and Public Sphere: Working in Community (2007), and curated Art as Social Interaction (Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong and The Pier-2 Art Center, Taipei, 2014) and Food First—an art based research project (Rockefeller Foundation, New York City, 2022). She co-curated the Taipei Biennial with Francesco Manacorda in 2018. Focusing on the intersections of art, activism and ecology, the organisation involved local NGOs to protest against land remediation, cultivate local ecological research  and create accessible trails in and around Taipei. Visitors to and participants of the biennial engaged in a range of activities, from viewing art in a traditional museum space to community-led education hikes.

Wu received Taiwan’s 19th National Award for Arts in 2016 in recognition of her innovative ways of engaging with both Taipei art communities and international fine art discourse. She is an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of Interdisciplinary Art of the National Kaohsiung Normal University in Taiwan.