WANGSHUI

Studio of WangShui

Little is known about the artist(s) of WangShui, a studio that originated from ‘a desire to dematerialize a corporeal identity’, as they told Mousse Magazine in 2019.

WangShui Artworks

WangShui employs diverse materials and techniques, including live insects, hydro dipping, and drones, to create immersive installations and moving-image works.

Julia Stoschek Collection

In 2019, WangShui held a solo exhibition at Julia Stoschek Collection in Berlin as part of the gallery’s year-long programme Horizontal Vertigo, presenting four video works and installations that address ideas of transformation through Chinese myths, history, and modern-day nationalism.

The installation Gardens of Perfect Exposure (2016–2018) saw WangShui construct a structure out of bath fixtures and roof repair fabric, among other materials, to house pupating silkworms. In addition to its reference to the Silk Road through the larvae, the work also alludes to various visible and invisible moments in Chinese history. Gardens of Perfect Exposure, which lends the installation its title, was an imperial palace in Beijing that was demolished by British and French troops in 1860; though no longer existent, the palace came to be a symbol of Chinese nationalism.

From Its Mouth Came a River of High-End Residential Appliances (2017–2019), a single-channel video installation, similarly explores the relationship between nationalism and cultural motifs through architecture. Shot using drones, the video shows the holes in the skyscrapers at Repulse Bay, Hong Kong, which are known as ‘dragon gates’—passages that, according to Feng Shui, allow dragons to fly through. Against the historical backdrop of various Feng Shui bans in China after 1949, WangShui considers the holes as a form of ‘ideological resistance’ to both the Chinese government and the rhetoric of Western architecture that has become the norm worldwide.

Shotgun Sunset

WangShui has also engaged with ideas of diaspora and dislocation in Shotgun Sunset (2020), a video work commissioned by the activist group Stop DiscriminAsian. Revolving around two non-binary Asian characters, the work is concerned with paranoia and ‘how to find agency in such a vulnerable state’, in the words of the studio.

Exhibitions

WangShui has presented their work internationally.

Selected solo and group exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial 2022, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2022); No Humans Involved, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2021); WangShui, Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin (2019); Belong Two, Jim Thompson House, Bangkok (2018); From Its Mouth Came a River of High-End Residential Appliances, Triple Canopy, New York (2017); Are You A Sexual Being?, Jack Hanley Gallery, New York (2017).

Website and Instagram

WangShui’s website can be found here and their Instagram can be found here.

Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2022