University of Oregon Winter 2022 Visiting Artist Lecture Series
Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research
Thursday, January 13, 4:00 p.m. in Lawrence Hall, Room 177, 1190 Franklin Boulevard, Eugene, Oregon 97403
Pei-Hsuan Wang: “I’ve Left My Body to Occupy Others”
Lectures will also live stream on the UO IS Media Services YouTube.
Utilizing media spanning video, sculpture, drawing, and installation, Pei-Hsuan Wang’s practice inquiries into personal insecurities navigating between the East and the West, two cultural and geographical delineations that have shaped her upbringing. Drawing from trauma, memory, family history, and aspirations, Wang’s work mines the vulnerabilities, contradictions, and beauty that reside in identity formation as an Asian woman in diaspora.
The artist’s 11-year-old niece Iris, a White and East Asian mixed-heritage, first-generation Taiwanese American, has inspired a body of work that imagines racial and cultural hybridity alongside various architypes in nature and in myths. Zoomorphic beings become a kind of guardian and portal, giving form to the inner experience, and opening up narratives that empower from the visceral as well as the imaginative.
Pei-Hsuan Wang holds a BA from Macalester College, MN and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI, USA. She was resident at ISCP, New York (2018), Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, Korea (2018), and guest resident at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2019). Wang is the winner of Special Jury Price of the 2019 Huayu Youth Award in China and is currently a candidate laureate at the Higher Institute of Art (HISK) in Ghent, Belgium.
This lecture is made possible in part by the Robert James Foundation.
Website: pei-hsuanwang.com
Headshot caption: Photo credit: Hania Abassi
Image caption: Mongrel (Self Portrait As Iris As a Wolf), 2021, stoneware, glaze, 18 x 35 x 12 inches
