An Introspective Retrospective

Opening: Saturday 9 April 2016, 15:00-18:00
15:30-16:30 Artist’s Talk: Yu-Chen Wang in conversation with White Fungus
17:00-17:30 Live Performance Happy End: Yu-Chen Wang and Andro Semeiko with actors Vivi Weng and Lin Suun 

Having lived and worked in London for the past 15 years, Yu-Chen Wang presents Nostalgia for the Future, her first solo show in Taiwan. This retrospective exhibition takes an introspective approach, drawing upon her personal experience to create a multi-layered mise-en-scène. Works made in the UK are reconfigured for a new context alongside a series of public events and new collaborations with Taiwan-based artists and curators.

Shifting between Taiwan and the UK (both island countries with significant industrial history), Wang’s memory, identity and cultural heritage have influenced the way in which she creates her work. She is interested in the history of industrialisation and modernisation from England’s Victorian era to contemporary mass-production, globalisation and migration in post-industrial Taiwan.

Wang primarily creates complex and intricate drawings interweaving elements of machinery, botany and architecture. She also extends her practice into installations involving industrial objects, archival documentation, science fiction stories, assemblage, films and performances. Whatever media Wang employs, her work explores the inseparable relationship between nature and technology, humans and machines.

In Nostalgia for the Future, Yu-Chen Wang plays the role of the ‘director’ staging the exhibition as an exploratory process of re-considering her practice to date and developing new projects in a theatrical manner. Occupying different areas of the gallery, the multiple acts “About Memory”, “Stories Retold” and “Future Workshops” are simultaneously happening on the stage.