Description
Jingwen Wu is an artist and image worker currently based between Shanghai & Los Angeles. The artist completes her academic study in BFA photography and video at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her works often evolve from self-exploration and criticism. Jingwen is born in Ya’an, China and spend her teenage years in Los Angeles, California. The experiences of moving to LA with her father at age eleven and separated from her mother, the artist spend most of the time alone through internet and video games. With the lack of maternal role in her childhood, the artist struggles not only as a foreigner but her identity as a woman as well. These unspeakable confusions lead her to the approach of photography. Growing up in different cultural environments generate a double consciousness which reflects deeply into the artist’s works and creating process: the dilemma of merge her eastern roots into western context.
Throughout her practice, the artist sees the contradiction also comes from the inequivalence of information between what she sees from the internet and what she encounters in reality. A polarisation has formed in the appearances of her works, a virtual constructed world of images and videos versus deadpan portraiture and daily objects. Between these images, the sense of material space and location are blurred with only sentiments remain. As if the artist takes “life” out of the material world and injects into the screen and turning into another material printed on paper. In the age of spin, boundaries between virtual and reality are becoming more inseparable. How can one construct trust and affection with others in this time of everything is constantly decontextualised? The images also reveals a passive aggressive undertone towards the authority and elitism. Jingwen utilise this resistance in her works to preserve the simple wish of love and trust for the child that falters to perceive and build rapprochement with other.
