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April Wang
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Conceptual Art
Installation, sculpture and mixed media pieces that center around a specific narrative
胡说八道
It is a common Chinese American experience to struggle with constructing identity at the intersection of vastly different cultural histories, to write ourselves into existence rather than float on the periphery of cultural narratives. In this context, how do we record that felt experience, where something exists to make a record of, but there is no vocabulary to record it in?
胡说八道 is a performance in which I create ink marks on my own body and transfer them onto a paper-mache sculpture. Through using my body as both a tool and a canvas, I assert my autonomy in shaping my own existence. Yet at the same time, by using my body as a canvas, I create an asemic language that resists translation yet insists on presence, embracing a lack of easy labels.
Paper-mâché itself is made through a process of destruction and reconstruction, echoing the fragmented nature of identity formation. As a material, it holds the nonsensical, the layered, and the in-between, becoming an analogy for the act of piecing together a self from scattered, inherited, and felt parts.
胡说八道 is a performance in which I create ink marks on my own body and transfer them onto a paper-mache sculpture. Through using my body as both a tool and a canvas, I assert my autonomy in shaping my own existence. Yet at the same time, by using my body as a canvas, I create an asemic language that resists translation yet insists on presence, embracing a lack of easy labels.
Paper-mâché itself is made through a process of destruction and reconstruction, echoing the fragmented nature of identity formation. As a material, it holds the nonsensical, the layered, and the in-between, becoming an analogy for the act of piecing together a self from scattered, inherited, and felt parts.
Fort Drawing
A charcoal drawing, about 12'x3', centered on around observation of a fort: a small sculpture that becomes a world within itself, its own environment. I imagine a fort as somewhere to hide, somewhere that is a hiding spot yet also entraps and allows you to wallow in your own emotions. My fort was a repurposed version of a stop motion set modeled after bathroom tiles, inspired by how I often retreat to the bathroom when in a bad mental state. The goal was to create a space that was tight yet liminal at the same time––meditative yet also unsettling, with something strange bubbling under the surface. That was reflected in the final drawing as well, which combined several different perspectives together into one long drawing.
Restrictions Drawing
A long-format drawing of a cluster of mushrooms, drawn from observation. The drawing is 2'x10'. The process involved a restriction of using only a sponge and ink to stamp shapes, rather than using any long strokes or erasable/editable materials.
Flora and Fauna
In today's world, littering and pollution is so commonplace that trash has become our flora and fauna. Plastic bags become fish, nets become jellyfish, and tires become sea snakes; we walk by them all without a care.
Tendrils
My parents grew up in rural farming villages in China before studying to become engineers and moving to the US to get PhDs. The materials used for this artwork, although modern and technological in aesthetic, are modeled after the bamboo hats my parents and their families wore and continue to wear. It's fascinating to me how they came from families so deeply rooted in nature to become part of modern technological advancements; the way they still carry that culture with them, the mindset of hard work and overcoming struggles, and meld that into their daily lives.
Heart On A Platter
Relationships are about sacrifice, but that sacrifice can become shallow and corrupted. In a toxic relationship, to serve someone your heart on a platter means nothing if the recipient sees it as just plastic: something quick and easy, meant to be discarded after being used.
Light of My Life
Societal definitions of gender are so paradoxical, especially for women. So much weight is put into physical characteristics, be that a demure and feminine appearance, marriage as a necessary life goal, or having a uterus. Yet at the same time, so little control is given to "real" women, as defined by these narrow rules, over their own bodies–especially when it comes to the uterus and reproductive system. If people are so obsessed with someone else's uterus, they don't need to bother trying to get with a person; why not just marry the uterus?
Bounded
Growing up with strict yet loving Asian immigrant parents, I often felt like I was in an awkward space of independence as a teenager. There is at once so much at stake–sacrifices to make worth it, unspoken dreams to fulfill, and space that feels like I'll never be big enough to fill–yet also so few right ways to do it, so little time to mature and so little space to grow.
It’s as if we are blank dolls, one-sided and shallow with our intentions. What adults often ignore about teenagers is the impact of these assumptions on our lives. We are all at once naive little children who cannot possibly step into the shoes of adults and take action in the world and at the same time brats who need to understand that we are dealing with the real world and its consequences. This is especially evident in people of color: activists are viewed as aggressive and ignorant instead of progressive, teenagers are disproportionately arrested or hate-crimed, and depending on what race they are, teenagers are either overachievers or absolute failures. Nothing ever feels like enough, and we end up trapped in that awkward, too-small-but-too-big-space created by expectations.
It’s as if we are blank dolls, one-sided and shallow with our intentions. What adults often ignore about teenagers is the impact of these assumptions on our lives. We are all at once naive little children who cannot possibly step into the shoes of adults and take action in the world and at the same time brats who need to understand that we are dealing with the real world and its consequences. This is especially evident in people of color: activists are viewed as aggressive and ignorant instead of progressive, teenagers are disproportionately arrested or hate-crimed, and depending on what race they are, teenagers are either overachievers or absolute failures. Nothing ever feels like enough, and we end up trapped in that awkward, too-small-but-too-big-space created by expectations.
Performative Activism
As our world sinks further and further into an age of social media, our need for attention becomes more and more shallow. The unfortunate truth of activism in the modern day is that it’s done much more for the benefit of the activists than the victim: as a way to garner attention and praise rather than selfless charity. Influencers and students alike share never ending streams of support for social issues, such as Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, school shootings, climate change, or local news. Their anguish, sadness, anger, and pain are filtered and funneled into a colorful burst of posts on Instagram. Two weeks later, they prepare to dispense a new batch of posts while never quite elaborating on or continuing to support the issues they so passionately defend. I wanted this work to show that, as dolled up and innocent as it may seem, behind the scenes, all that activism is simply a mass of grey, lifeless apathy. Made solely to for the user to pat themselves on the back for being a good person, this kind of activism stays just like a mask, turned on and off at the user’s convenience.
Protected Speech
The modern world is constantly changing, as conventions of gender, sexuality, race, and more are being overturned. Accompanying this change, unsurprisingly, are people unapologetically spreading their opinion, and with the Internet growing in every sense of the word, the conversation about freedom of speech is becoming more complicated by the day. What constitutes protected speech? What should be protected, what should be censored?
The people voicing their opinions publicly are, to some degree, exposing themselves to discomfort in order to better understand the world, reflected by the visceral and uncomfortable presentation of a mouth without a body. The protection they have, however, is flimsy and paper-thin. Especially as a student journalist, I’m noticing more and more the silencing of opinions that people don’t agree with (take, for example, the New York Times reporter who people were lobbying for to be fired, after writing an article supporting J.K. Rowling). We cannot deny that it’s hurtful to hear outdated and prejudiced opinions, but what people often forget is that these opinions come from humans trying to reconcile what society trains them to believe with what they’re seeing in the world.
Freedom of speech exists so that we can have conversations and connect on a human level. Let people raise their voices: not for us to look up to or idolize, but rather to examine the center of their beliefs. We need to see the person, the mouth at the center of the speech. The conversation cannot end with “I’m right, you’re wrong”. That is how racism, sexism, homophobia, and discrimination survive, when we degrade those we disagree with into monochrome and one-dimensional people, defined by their opinions. People are as malleable as clay and capable of change. Give them room to grow. See them as humans. Let them talk.
And talk back.
The people voicing their opinions publicly are, to some degree, exposing themselves to discomfort in order to better understand the world, reflected by the visceral and uncomfortable presentation of a mouth without a body. The protection they have, however, is flimsy and paper-thin. Especially as a student journalist, I’m noticing more and more the silencing of opinions that people don’t agree with (take, for example, the New York Times reporter who people were lobbying for to be fired, after writing an article supporting J.K. Rowling). We cannot deny that it’s hurtful to hear outdated and prejudiced opinions, but what people often forget is that these opinions come from humans trying to reconcile what society trains them to believe with what they’re seeing in the world.
Freedom of speech exists so that we can have conversations and connect on a human level. Let people raise their voices: not for us to look up to or idolize, but rather to examine the center of their beliefs. We need to see the person, the mouth at the center of the speech. The conversation cannot end with “I’m right, you’re wrong”. That is how racism, sexism, homophobia, and discrimination survive, when we degrade those we disagree with into monochrome and one-dimensional people, defined by their opinions. People are as malleable as clay and capable of change. Give them room to grow. See them as humans. Let them talk.
And talk back.
Revelations
Part 2 of a series exploring memory and how we change as we grow.
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