Based in Boston, Yu-Wen Wu is a conceptual artist whose work is centered around themes of migration, identities, and transformation. I first encountered Yu-Wen’s work when I lived near Chinatown in Boston during the pandemic in 2020. One night, I stumbled into a beautiful installation of lanterns right outside the Chinatown gate. Commissioned by the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy in 2020, each one of the lanterns in Lantern Stories was luminous against the dark sky, quietly telling stories and histories of Chinese immigration. I then had the chance to work with Yu-Wen on her 2021 solo exhibition, Internal Navigation, at Praise Shadows Art Gallery in Boston. Yu-Wen’s art is very much interdisciplinary; besides community-engaged practices and public art, she also creates drawings, sculptures, and site-specific video installations. This year, she has been named one of the three recipients of the 2023 James and Audrey Foster Prize at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston. On the occasion of this prize and exhibition, we decided to sit down to talk about time, material, and transformation, all of which are central to her practices.
—Yutong Shi
Yutong Shi
I have always loved your moon drawings on Dura-Lar paper. Whenever I encounter them in the gallery, it always feels like they have been waiting to show me something—perhaps a story, perhaps a memory, or perhaps a dream. Can you tell me a little bit about your drawing practice for people who are not familiar with your work? You have made lots of wall-based drawings on various paper materials.
Yu-Wen Wu
Drawing is a large component of my practice. I have worked with an alternative acetate drawing material made by Dura-Lar. The translucency, how it reacts to different drawing and painting materials, and the durability for large-scale drawings and collage is different from my works on other types of paper such as various rice papers and watercolor papers.
