Artists
Photo Credit: NIU Chun-Chiang
WANG Shin-Yu
WANG Shin-Yu
| Location | USA / Colorado |
|---|---|
| Residency | Anderson Ranch Arts Center |
| Year of the Grant | 2004 |
| Work | Taking and Giving (series) |
| Personal Website | WANG Shin-Yu's Personal Website |
Being in a foreign environment is influential to an artist’s practice because it forces the artist to break away from his or her usual ways of thinking. Through distance and self-identification, what the artist experiences during his or her residency abroad slowly affects the way future works are created.
Artist Statement:
Clay has always been the medium through which I hope to express my ideas. I condense all of my emotions – happiness, anger, love, and hate – into the movements of pinching and shaping clay. Abstract thoughts are materialized through the process of firing. Artists who work in ceramics are often bound by the techniques and limitations of the material. I had wonderful experiences during this residency at Anderson Ranch Arts Center and had overcome many material limitations. I also met many artists who used the same material as I did and saw how cultural differences affected artists’ attitudes toward that same material. It was interesting observing all of this. I began thinking about whether I treated ceramics discreetly, as in the Eastern frame of mind, or casually, as from the Western perspective.
Anderson Ranch Arts Center is located in the Rocky Mountains. It is near the famous vacation destination Aspen, Colorado and shares the same high standard and cost of living as Aspen. Local residents are extremely interested in the activities organized by the center and participate in almost every program arranged.
During my short stay, I gained the most not from breakthroughs in techniques, but from cultural conflicts. These conflicts helped me to understand my own culture. Such valuable cultural awareness was invisible in its form, but would affect an artist for a long time.