Welcome Wen Liu (RAiR 2022 - 23)
Wen in her RAiR studio.
Lazarus, reclaimed furniture legs, rubber, gold leaf, 78” x 30” x 5”
Lazarus (detail)
Remnant Island, abandoned Chicago buildings residue, rubber, board, mirror, tablecloth, resin, 93” x 93” x 16”
For Those I Have Never Met, found handkerchief ash, found table cloth ash, clay, reclaimed wood, 36" x 80" x 70"
Everywhere & Nowhere, Reclaimed wooden furniture, rubber, personally significant places residue, bricks, 50" x 78" x 23"
Wen Liu was born in Shanghai, China and is currently based in Chicago, IL. She is a DCASE Individual Artists Program Grantee for 2018, 2019 and 2020, and she received the Illinois Arts Council Agency 2020 Artist Fellowship Award. She has attended residencies at Vermont Studio Center, MASS MoCA, ACRE, Hyde Park Art Center. Her work has been exhibited in the National Grand Theater in Beijing, China; 6018/North, Zhou B Art Center, Manifold Gallery, Lubeznik Center for the Arts in Michigan City, IN, Culture Center in Chicago; and Tiger Strikes Asteroid.
My works address loss and abandonment through the modification and assembly of found materials. I started collecting reclaimed furniture and domestic objects to build my sense of belonging and security when I immigrated to the US. The sculptural reinvestment of found objects and the temporal shift of traces from past to present are some of the qualities highlighted in my works. These displacements imply narratives of absence and presence as well as alienation and comfort.
I’ve recently started incorporating clay into my practice, using fire as a material mixed with household materials like Chinese herbal medicine, found fabric, or a Chinese-English dictionary, are burned together to form an organic glaze capturing the shape of the original object. Details in these works are a testament to lived time and memory – the sculptures wear history on their surface, the process of decay called “aging” is built upon them.