Szu-Yi Wang (TW) develops her interdisciplinary practice as a research artist for projects from artistic narratives to drawing researches, from site-specific issues to intercultural discourses. With her design and architectural professions trained in both Taiwan and the Netherlands, she takes 'the interior' as a lens looking into intimate and flexible gestures toward spatial issues rather than limited by its scale. Her works are presented in a poetic sense with her unique sensibility. From drawing languages, cultural crafts to installations; they are her inquiries into more inclusive relationships between humans and nature, object and subject, urban landscape and the environment.
Zi Yuan, A Spring Stroll 字園遊步 - Zì Yuán (字園, literally meaning 'Hanzi Garden') consists of the narrative acts through texts, sculptures, body movements for guiding and navigating among the Hanzi sculptures in de Voedseluin Rotterdam. Szu-Yi translated/transformed the Hanzi associated with spring and nature into paper sculptures that served as the platform of dialogues—for people to wander in and for the performer Nicole van den Berg to improvise with.
Responding to the concept experimented in de Voedseltuin, the project introduces a way to breathe, grow with and learn from nature. People are welcome to follow the narrative voice, the performance, and stroll among a series of Hanzi sculptures subtly introduced into the garden as leading us to read nature. The research is composed of the knowledge from Hanzi—regarding how the ancients observed the relationships between the sun and the trees, among the creatures and the environment in order to understand the universe—the time, the season, the weather, the operation of the world. The project was first presented at MOMO Create Perform in 2021.
Zi Xian – an edition for ‘Wat ik je nog wilde zeggen’ - In exhibition 'Wat ik je nog wilde zeggen' (What else I wanted to tell you), curated by Rianne Zijderveld and Dean Bowen at TENT Rotterdam, the social impact of language is questioned from several perspectives. It's a conceptual exhibition about the poetry and power of words, about shifting meanings, misconception and deception, about losing words and finding words—a spatial poem in which our linguistic reality is explored and dissected as a poetic gesture. Zi Xian, with a specific display unfolding its fragility and timelessness, is invited to be part of the dialogues seeking the lost narrative and found forms of our languages.
The Form/Rhythm In between 形韻之間 - The paper sculptures crafted with the streaming lights and shadows as an interpretation series about the rhythmic, dynamic notion of the "in-between" concealed in the Han character xian. | Presented in the virtual room at Dutch Design Week 2020.
Foreshore 漫步潮閒 - It is a collaboration as well as a material dialogue between Szu-Yi Wang and musician YenTing Lo. The light-shadow pieces perform lively while responding to the song that narrates human perceptions of natural phenomena associated with the moon. The rhythm becomes the shared core between the musical and spatial languages subtly triggering our senses and imagination through the melody of the strings and the in-between space upon the papers.
Shan yu Shu 山與樹 - A research miniature series on the cultural landscape in Taiwan. Derived from one of the Taiwanese folding techniques used in religious paper crafts, the folding pieces interweave and present how Shan (mountain) and Shu (tree) surround, merge and reflect the spatial and natural scenes of local life and belief. "When you climb up the hill, walk through the wooden paths, step on stone stairs, you already started the journey toward the temple ..." | Exhibited in the group show initiated by Crafts Council NL, Dutch Design Week 2019.
Zi Xian 字閒 - Zi Xian (literally meaning Hanzi Space) is the research based on the visual formulating origin of the Han character xian - which relates to notions of space, room, moment. It is a long-term project excavating the immaterial spatial qualities of space and time while deepening the developments of the author's research / design methods. | Exhibited in 'What else I wanted to tell you' (What else I wanted to tell you) initiated by Dean Bowen and curated by Rianne Zijderveld, TENT Rotterdam 2020-21.
Ritual upon the Paper 躍然紙上的儀典 - A research miniature series on the cultural landscape in Taiwan. Derived from one of the Taiwanese folding techniques used in religious paper crafts, the folding pieces interweave and present cultural flows/movements which surround, merge, and reflect the spatial scenes inspired by Taiwanese local religion. As folding a series of personal spatial narratives, Szu-Yi aims to unfold the alternative imagination of the cultural images from her home country. | Exhibited in the group show initiated by Crafts Council NL, Dutch Design Week 2019.
Water, Air, Ambience - "What I am drawing is a site made out of water. The building is gone. Yet the water forms the new, soft structure." The project investigates the ambience of architectural drawings in a poetic and speculating approach. With the site—the water in a bare basement—the author develops her drawing tool to depict changing, reflecting conditions and perception—of the place, the water, then its atmosphere. She proposes a new way of perceiving and conceiving the transitting qualities of space.
San Shui 山水 - The 'texture' of our spatial, physical & amp; amp; amp; emotional perceptions - a representation of a site - inspires the idea of the invisible past and imaginative future. Hence, the drawing research focuses on the reflecting qualities of the space, the water. The non-existing architecture triggers a perceiving act of the audience. As considering layers of information - messages from the environment - the drawing tool has its potential to investigate subtle, immaterial qualities of spatial ambience. It results in the materialization of a coding drawing language.
Narrative Rooms - Drawing is narrating. Taking narrative as the inspiration for production, the project investigates the qualities of the private interior space through various ways of narrative — texts, poems, photographs, and films. It proposes a series of working scenarios derived from one's private daily realms. The drawings aim to unfold the new spatial reality — ephemeral but active like human thoughts — assembled with the acts of working, thinking, creating.
