Als ich sie entlang des Flusses suchte, stand sie mitten im Wasser (When I sought her along the river, she stood in the middle of the water)
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Evelyn Taocheng Wang’s artistic practice emerges from an
interest in what constitutes identity and culture, and how one’s own body is
culturally relative to—and intertwined with—autobiographical structures.
Initially trained in classical Chinese painting, Wang’s research is based on
different (art) histories, feeding from perceived concepts of East and West,
and offers fragmented, diary-like views of embodied personal, and external
fantasies and desires.
For her first solo exhibition in Austria, the artist shifts
her focus onto the fantasies, prejudices, and stereotypes of Chinese tourists
in Vienna that is suggested as the epitome of European culture and
civilization. Sourcing from a research trip to the Austrian capital in December
2019 and the artist’s memories of Vienna-tourism commercials broadcast in
Chinese state television during the economic reform in the 1980s, Wang
investigates—through performance, drawing, text and photography—the city’s
imperial past and decadence, tourist attractions, and cultural institutions.
The exhibition borrows its title from a passage of one of
the poems of the Shijing (Classic of Poetry), the oldest existing
collection of Chinese poetry spanning from the 11th to 7th centuries BC. The
poem Jian Jia (Reed) follows the author on his quest of a woman (or,
as sometimes suggested: his self) through different landscapes, rivers and
abstract forms, leaving the reader uncertain about who the sought person in the
poem might be, thus opening up the notion of identity as a moving concept.
Staged as a fictional “tourist office” with opulent
neo-baroque furniture and fake stucco, the exhibition consists of a new series
of rice paper paintings, produced in immediate reaction to the tourist
attractions visited in Vienna, amongst them the Vienna State Opera, the
Musikverein and Konzerthaus, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the National
Library, Christmas Markets, the Giant Pandas at the Tiergarten Schönbrunn
(Vienna Zoo) as well as Café Demel and its famous cake store. Presented
alongside the paintings, a selection of souvenirs and photographs taken from
the artist during her site visit emphasize the performative nature of her
practice, transforming the installation into a diary-like photo documentation
of her performative sightseeing tour.
Though seemingly arbitrary in their nature, Wang’s witty
observations and motives of her paintings bear witness to the artist’s deeply
personal entanglement between cultures. While images of coffee and cake,
fragments of architecture, or scenes from the Vienna State Opera reveal a
genuine longing for an imagined old Europe, the viewer is likewise confronted
with the controversial logo of the Austrian coffee brand “Meinl” or the image
of two Giant Pandas from the imperial zoo in Schönbrunn, mirroring the
ambiguity of Austria’s cultural heritage and beauty. By projecting her very own
fantasies onto the city, Wang reverses the stereotypes and prejudices about
Chinese tourists in Europe, and challenges ostensibly fixed notions of
Europeanness and exoticism, belonging and cultural identity — and, thus,
continues the trajectory that lies at the core of her practice: the idea that
the body is culturally relative, and that what it signifies, continuously
shifts according to time and place.
Evelyn Taocheng Wang (*1981, Chengdu) lives and works in Rotterdam. She studied
classical painting in China, continued her education at the Städelschule,
Frankfurt and was resident artist at De Ateliers, Amsterdam (2012-2014). Solo exhibitions
and performances have been presented at FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims;
S.M.A.K., Ghent; KW Berlin; Carlos Ishikawa, London; Chateau Shatto, Los
Angeles; Tale of a Tub, Rotterdam; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, a.o. Group
exhibitions include the documenta 14 Public Programs, Kassel; ICA, London;
Manifesta 11, Zurich; The Kitchen, New York; De Hallen Haarlem; The 9th
Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai; Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam. Wang's work is
part of the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA; Bonnefanten
Museum, Maastricht; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, a.o.
This exhibition is realized with the generous support of Mondriaan Fund.