United States
Statement
I construct physical, emotional, and conceptual spaces to investigate the intersection between history, memory, and fiction. My work often oscillates between large historical narratives and intimately personal ones. The space created by these seeming dichotomies is also one where conceptual rigor can co-exist with personal and emotive impulses – where the tongue-in-cheek is also utterly sincere.
An ongoing mixed-media project titled An Archaeology of You proposes “you” as both the site of an archaeological study as well as the relic. It is the coming together of several research interests that first grew out of the notion of historical amnesia that describes the experience of the second half of the 20th century in many post-conflict countries, including my own – Taiwan. If “you” is regarded as an archaeology, it exists only in the past and can be only understood through fragments and hypotheses. If you belong to a history that is unknowable, and I can only understand myself through you, then I cannot fully know myself – my history is in fact, an amnesia.The project is a study in a poetic subversion to the dominant and patriarchal forms of historymaking, one that focuses on collective “we’s” and demonized “they’s,” so that “you,” a decidedly unacademic pronoun, one that surfaces in epistolary writings and popular music, also suggests a kind of empathy towards the subjects “we” investigate.
While in residence at GlogaurAIR, I intend to continue working on several projects as well as start a new body of work that investigates the caricarization of the monstrous and demonic as a way to describe historical violence.
Profile
GlogauAIR resident from 01 January 2017 to 31 March 2017
GlogauAIR Project
Last summer I had the opportunity to attend seminars with Doug Ashford and Maha Maamoun, two international contemporary artists tackling the idea of the “Non-human.” Because the seminars took place in Austria, I started researching the local traditions of monsters, particularly the Krampus. I started wondering what the utility and economy of monsters are, and what they can tell us about being human and animal. I found it curious that even though monsters are beings we’ve created, they seem to know more about our place in history, as well as the perils of our futures.
The 2012 Taipei Biennial, curated by Anselm Franke, was called Modern Monsters: Death and Life and Fiction. In the introductory text, Franke writes that “The Chinese experience of the twentieth century […] can be characterized as a raging Taowu [mythical monster] – an experience not merely of hitherto unheard of evils and suffering, but an experience of undermined human intentions, seeding not reason and liberation, but waves of repression and countless inhuman and irrational terrors committed in the name of humanity, rationality, or a social order that must be installed or defended against all threats.” The identification between monster and history has been an apt analogy in my research in Chinese and Taiwanese history. In a way, it seems, the idea of a monster, has perhaps unfairly alleviated the complex tension of the structural violence that ties victim to perpetrator through the course of the twentieth century.
At Glogauair, I wish to continue this research on the relationship between monsters and history. How have the conditions of our present, with global unrest, racial tensions, environmental decline, mass migration, and so on, become a version of this monster that haunts us? What kind of monsters have human created and will create in the age of the Anthropocene? What role does gender and femininity play in the construction of the monster as history? I wish to create installation and performance works that evokes this idea of a border-line human existence occupied by monsters as well as humans and animals.
So many people in my generation, particularly in Europe, have personal and familial experiences with the structural violence of World War II and its aftermath. I want to incorporate some of these interviews or conversations that will serve to highlight the ways in which historical violence seeps into the lives of families, into the fabric of our most intimate lives. In some ways, perhaps we need to accept that these barbaric figures portrayed as monsters are in fact, our own kin.
CV Summary
b. 1982, United States
Education
- MFA 2013 Parsons The New School for Design, Fine Art
- MA 2009 University of Amsterdam, Art History
- BFA 2005 Washington University in St. Louis, Painting and Art History
Exhibitions
- 2015 Loops, Inside/Out Gallery, Somerville, MA Roots, On The Ground Floor Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
- 2014 Fictions, as Usual: Recent Works by Ilyn Wong. J & J Smith Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
- 2013 Hobby Group #1. Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft #2104, Allen Park, MI (curated by Isaac Richard Pool and Crystal Palmer) Present Futures, Mandrake, Los Angeles, CA (curated by Kaitlynn Redell and Sara Jimenez) The Intelligence of Things, The Kitchen, New York, NY (curated by Wendy Vogel and Jessica Wilcox) React: Feminine Mystique at 50, Arnold & Sheila Aronson Gallery, New York, NY (curated by Natalie Balthrop and Deborah Engel)
- 2012 Transparency, 25 East Gallery, Parsons The New School for Design, New York, NY Eloquent Delinquents, 25 East Gallery, Parsons the New School for Design, New York, NY (curated by Simone Douglas and Andrea Geyer) Out of Iceland, Walker Space, New York, NY Over Sensitive, 25 East Gallery, New York, NY (curated by Anthony Aziz, Simone Douglas and Andrea Geyer)
- 2011 The Beauty of Minor Matter, Skalitzer 140, Berlin, Germany
- 2010 Small Works, Lorem Ipsum Books, Cambridge, MA Thirteen Under Thirty, Rubin-Frankel Gallery, Boston, MA False Face, Brewer’s Mansion, Brooklyn, NY Little Critters, Nave Gallery, Somerville, MA Hey I Know That Guy, Washington Street Art Center, Somerville, MA
- 2005 Washington University BFA Show, Steinberg Gallery, St. Louis They Put Us at The Corner of the School, Des Lee Gallery, St. Louis, MO
- 2004 The Romance Issue, Des Lee Gallery, St. Louis, MO
Curatorial Studies
- 2014 I scarcely have the right to use this ghostly verb. Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, Parsons The New School for Design, New York, NY
Awards, Honors and residencies
- 2016 Picture Berlin, Berlin, Germany (upcoming) ACRE, Steuben, WI
- 2015 Truth, Lies, and Lore The Banff Centre, Banff, Canada EnterText Arteles, Haukijaervi, Finland 33 Officina Creativa, Toffia, Italy The Non-human with Doug Ashford, Summer Academy, Salzburg, Austria They Were Like Animals with Maha Maamoun, Summer Academy, Salzburg, Austria
- 2013 Tiny Circus Winter Residency, New Orleans, LA
- 2012 Stop Motion Animation – Recipient of the Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Foundation Scholarship, Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA Ripping Yarns: Stories and Fibers – Recipient of the Windgate Charitable Foundations Grant, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, TN
- 2011 Takt Kunstprojektraum Residency, Berlin, Germany Somerville Arts Council’s Local Cultural Council Grant Recipient, Somerville, MA
- 2010 Montana Artist Refuge, Basin, MT
- 2007 Amsterdam Merit Scholarship Recipient, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- 2006 Taiwan American Education Trust Recipient
Publications and Symposia
- I (co-editor), in conjunction with I scarcely have the right to use this ghostly verb, 2014
- Black Lines and Shards in Memories Can’t Wait: Conversations on Accessing History and Archives Through Artistic Practices, eds. Malene Dam, Bridget de Gersigny and Kate Levy. International Center of Photography, 2013
- Artists Panel Discussion at React: Feminine Mystique at 50 Symposium, Parsons The New School For Design, Feb. 23, 2013
- Memory Attachee: Bridging Past and Present Through Family Photographs at Memories Can’t Wait Symposium, International Center of Photography, Dec. 14, 2012
- Cultural Integration or Cultural Hegemony?: The Ambiguity of the EU’s Cultural Policy Simulacrum, Vol. 16, No. 2, March, 2008
