Wun Ting Wendy Tai

Artist statement

I was born in Hong Kong and immigrated with my family to Canada at the age of four. We moved back shortly before the British 'handed over' the post-colonial city to China. In Hong Kong, I attended a culturally diverse high school that instilled in me an enthusiastic curiosity about cultures other than my own. This inquisitiveness led me to study abroad first at University of Pennsylvania, and then at Maryland Institute College of Art. To learn more about cross-cultural relations, I embarked on artistic fellowships and study programs in South Africa, France and South Korea. Travel and field research are important in my aspiration to make work that is sensitive to our constantly evolving cultural-political setting.

This curiosity about social and cultural dynamics is embedded in my interest in creating temporal, interactive and performative installations. Dan Graham once said that artists "dream of doing something that's more social, more collaborative, and more real than art." In sharing this dream, I try to work with a diversity of media and processes, ranging carpet to Internet telephony. Looking at the work of Alfredo Jaar has led me to believe that a fluid approach towards material provides the flexibility needed for interdisciplinary collaboration and public involvement.

While I am engaged in addressing social issues, I also make work that orients myself to the world. My family practices a mix of Buddhism, Taoism and ancestor worship, and I allow my upbringing to inform my aesthetic choices. The meditative quality of Wolfgang Laib's pieces, the transient nature of life and death, and the personal experience of my mother's passing away all have an influence in my work. Through simple yet deliberate gestures and the careful arrangement of objects and material, my installations demonstrate cultural and social hybridity in a poetic and ephemeral manner.

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Disabled Chairs