Souvenirs

"Souvenir" is about New York City trash. Artist Yu-Ching Wang went to different parks in New York City and picked up abandoned objects that provided her with information about the city, helped her to imagine what the people of the neighborhood are like, and had an association with her personal experiences and cultural background. "Souvenirs" include a series of photos and books with images and texts as the titles and information of the images. The content of the photos is artificial products, which were abandoned in New York City parks, on artificial turf. The texts inside the books below every image include the titles that reflect Yu-Ching's perspectives and thoughts inspired by this trash and the dates and places where she found these objects.

Yu-Ching Wang was caught by surprise at the amount of trash on the streets when she first arrived in NYC. In the beginning, it was hard to accept the scenes and the smells the trash caused, but gradually she became used to it. When she returns to New York City from other cities or countries and smells the odor of the city, she knows that she was back. The city itself has a very unique scent. Thus, Yu-Ching thinks the street scene with trash is a kind of a feature of the city.

Yu-Ching Wang was born in Taipei, Taiwan and now lives and works in New York. She is an interdisciplinary artist and works in video, performative action, spatial installation, and photography. She received her Master's degree in Fine Arts at Pratt Institute in 2022. She holds a BFA from the Department of Fine Arts and focused on Mixed Media at Taipei National University of the Arts, and an MFA in Plastic Arts at Tainan National University of the Arts. She recently had her solo exhibition in the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan, in 2022. Yu-Ching Wang's recent works focus on exploring the social and cultural elements in the environment around her through the lens of her identity as a foreigner in the U.S. Like a social investigator, based on objectively observing the living environment and society, then she makes her artworks through subjective thinking. She collects information and clues from the outside world, such as abandoned objects in the parks and some seemingly unrelated events that happened in New York City in the same month, and associates them with her thoughts and personal experience about her race and her cultural background. Through intervening in specific situations, such as public spaces, to produce artworks with her perspectives, Yu-Ching enjoys creating unusual and humorous scenes to present hidden critical and political concepts and meanings. She strives for the moment when people become aware of unexpected realities provoked by her projects.