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Yu-Chen Wang

Yu-Chen Wang (born 1978 in Taichung Taiwan) is a British-Taiwanese artist and curator. She is based in London, UK, working internationally.

Education

Yu-Chen Wang graduated with an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art in London in 2002. She previously attended the Postgraduate Study programme at Goldsmiths College University of London.

Practice

Wang has worked with the impact of industries and navigation on nature, landscape and people in Northern England. Most recently, she extended her research onto Taiwan’s mangrove forests. She states that her practice "very much focuses on research and process, experience and relationship. There’s a particular way for developing my work, which often involves a period of time spent in a specific place. I would then undertake extensive research the contextual histories and engage with a group of locally-based people or specialists who would assist my research. Two major components I’d like to explore generally: the archives and archaeology, which form the main source of inspiration for developing my work."

In 2011, Wang created a multimedia project at the Victoria Baths as a result of her residency at the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art in Manchester. The Splash and a Last Drop, based on a short science fiction story by Bob Dickinson, included a series of drawings, sculptures, and a film about an immersive live performance.

Her project Full Circle, an immersive cinematic video installation with sound design by Kristian Craig Robinson aka Capitol K, was commissioned by Doncaster Creates. Wang explored Doncaster’s industrial heritage and looked once again at the collision of nature and technology. The video was subsequently touring with screenings at The Lindholme Hall Estate in the Hatfield Moors and the Potteric Carr Nature Reserve as part of ArtBomb 2022. During her artist- residency at Metal, Peterborough in 2022, Wang researched the history of draining the Fens with a particular interest in the interaction between historic and natural environments.

Wang is interested in what is outside the picture, thereby excluded from history. The Honorary Mention Collide Award, a partnership programme between Arts at CERN and FACT Liverpool enabled Wang to be invited to Geneva in 2018 and establish a dialogue with engineers and particle physicists at CERN. Combining images and references from both personal and institutional archives with interviews with scientists she created the poetic narrative We aren't able to prove that just yet, but we know it's out there. By giving a voice to CERN’s technicians, analysts and engineers, she explored the human scale of the CERN project. Wang's interest in quantum physics continued in her participation in the festival In the Ether – A Festival of Quantum Science and Technology at the ArtScience Museum in Singapore. She was talking at the Quantum Conversations — It’s Here, There and Everywhere in 2025, on a panel with Dagomir Kaszlikowski, Principal Investigator at the Centre for Quantum Technologies, and Eckhard Wallis, curator at Deutsches Museum.

Her work How We Are Where We Are at Tate Modern in 2024 was looking at how collecting and displaying art are intertwined with industry and empire. Using the visual tropes used by museums founded in nineteenth-century Britain, Wang created a theatrical installation visitors could walk through. Her project was conceived during the Transforming Collections Artist Research Residency, as part of the Transforming Collections: Reimagining Art, Nation and Heritage project, led by Dr. susan pui san lok, director of the UAL Decolonising Arts Institute.

Along her exhibitions, the artist sometimes hosts dinner or breakfast events, like the cross-cultural Pān-toh Supra at Contemporary Art Space in Batumi and at Tbilisi Triennial in Georgia, two of many collaborations with her partner, the British-Georgian artist Andro Semeiko.

In her role as a curator, Wang was running the art space Basement Art Project in central London for many years. She curated Happy End at Yinka Shonibare's space Guest Projects in London featuring works by artists Andro Semeiko, Alasdair Duncan, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Ad de Jong, Sheena Macrae, Andrew Darke, Lakis and Aris Ionas, Sebastian Lowsley-Williams and Tomoko Takahashi, including performances by Tom Eykelhof and Lesley Cook and a film programme curated by Georgia Korossi.

Awards and residencies

  • 2011: Breathe residency at Chinese Centre for Contemporary Art Manchester
  • 2016/17: Annotations Outset Study Commissions
  • 2018: CERN Honorary Mention Collide International / New Art Commission
  • 2018: Junction Works residency at Grand Union
  • 2022: Residency at Metal, Peterborough, Chauffeur's Cottage
  • 2023: Transforming Collections Artist Research Residency

Teaching

Yu-Chen Wang is Associate Lecturer in BA Fine Art Drawing at Camberwell College / University of the Arts London.

She has given lectures and talks at Goldsmiths, University of London; Falmouth University, Cornwall; Liverpool John Moore University; National Taipei University of Education; University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury; National Cheng Kung University, Tainan; Wimbledon College of Arts London; Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore, among others.

Exhibitions & Projects

Publications

References

External links