wen cheng

Lives and works in Chapel Hill, NC

Artist statement

Western ideas entered China through doors forced open. The pursuit of modernity brought a question that remains: what do we adopt, and what happens to what we inherit? China’s compressed modernization brought conflicting values into the span of a few generations. Born around the millennium, I grew up amid rapid change and an explosion of information. Inherited Chinese narratives became entangled with new images of freedom, happiness, and success. My work asks how I can make sense of these competing values and find my identity within them. Through photography, printmaking, text, moving image, and installation, I bring my Chinese cultural inheritance into contact with the images and aspirations that shape my idea of a modern life. I question how media make certain ways of living appear natural, desirable, or true, and how capitalist and neoliberal values make happiness and self-realization individual responsibilities. I am also invested in these promises: they shape the life I imagine and the relationships I desire. Working with found images and texts allows me to construct a history I can speak with. My parents, grandparents, and I hold different ideas of what makes a life meaningful. When my questions find little room in the conversations available to me, I turn to other histories through cinema, magazines, photographs, and letters. I build an archive through selection, translation, rewriting, and reprinting. These materials help me understand my queerness, but also carry...

Artwork