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April Wang
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Conceptual Art
Installation, sculpture and mixed media pieces that center around a specific narrative
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.
Gender Deficit
Women's clothing has either terrible pockets or no pockets, a remnant of past sexist mindsets that women working at home didn't need pockets. Misogyny may not be as blatant as in the past, but it still exists in mindsets and tradition, often internalized. Part of being a woman in the modern day is unlearning that prejudice–the internalized limitations for women's personalities, appearances, jobs, etc.–and giving ourselves the pockets that internalized misogyny makes us assume we just can't have.
Caution Series
There used to be a time when I didn't want to live; my anxiety made me see risk in everything, from leaving the house to talking to doing homework. But life spun on and I kept finding seemingly insignificant joys, like the sun hitting my mirror or my sister's music floating through the walls. The danger I had seen became a beautiful pattern–I want to take on that danger and risk of living, to look to the future, and fall in love with what could be.
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.
Memories
Part 1 of a series, exploring memory and how we change as we grow. The tubes growing out of the box contain hundreds of doodles of inside jokes between my friends and me, referencing Pandora's box. The bittersweet reality of growing up is that we forget things, our memories pushing out of our minds like the evils of Pandora's Box no matter how much we try to hold on to them. However, there is hope and light left behind; even as our minds forget, our lives remain forever changed, forever opened up to the world by the memories we no longer have.
Revelations
Part 2 of a series exploring memory and how we change as we grow.
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