If There is a Place I Haven’t Been to (Yu-Chen Wang)

If there is a place I haven’t been to is a multifaceted installation emerging from Yu-Chen Wang’s personal archives and materials collected from artist residencies and field research over the past decade. With a particular focus on exploring the artist’s relationship with these places and associated individuals, the documentations are recontextualized and integrated with fictional and autobiographical narratives. Her assemblage envisions landscapes of the future synthesized and remodeled from the archives and memory — where ecosystems and technosystem are inextricably intertwined.

To map the landscapes, Wang exploits drawing, text, sculpture, light, audio, and moving image to evoke a sequence of site-specific situations and spatial interventions. Surrounding sounds interspersing with multilayered imageries disseminate through MOCA Taipei, leading visitors through the space with internal monologues, absorbing mark-making, elusive light and the play of shadows as well as reverberating beats and sporadic projections. The audiences are invited to explore “interior landscapes” at their own pace; their movement journeying through the gallery will not only shape the individual experience, but also contribute to the completion of this installation.

Sound design: Capitol K
With thanks to Kuang-Chi Hung (Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, National Taiwan University)
The work is supported by RC Culture and Arts Foundation and National Culture and Arts Foundation.

The work of Yu-Chen Wang asks fundamental questions about human identity at a key point in history, where ecosystems and techno-systems have become inextricably intertwined. At the same time, her Taiwanese origins, combined with a London-based practice, have created a vision that is personal and autobiographical. Her central practice is drawing, allowing her to explore and meditate on mechanical and biological forms, and the ways in which their bodily borderlines blur and mutate. From these extemporizations, she then finds collaborative routes that take her work into the realms of fictional text, provoking the subsequent production of sculptural installation, performance, music, and film in various combinations.

She has exhibited internationally, including at National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (2020), Science Gallery Dublin (2020); iMAL, Brussels (2020); CCCB, Barcelona (2019); Tbilisi Triennial (2018); FACT, Liverpool (2017); CFCCA, Manchester (2016);  Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2016); Manchester Art Gallery (2016); Yeo Workshop (Singapore, 2015);  Taipei Biennial (2014); Hayward Gallery, (London, 2014). She was an artist-in-residence at Taipei Artist Village (2019); Seoul Museum of Art (2017); Drawing Room, London (2016-17); Science and Industry Museum (Manchester, 2015).
 http://www.yuchenwang.com