YU-CHEN WANG

How We Are Where We Are 2024

Acrylic on fibreboard, pencil on paper, prints, wood, fabric, metal, light, video (4K, 8'00"), sound and movement of visitors
Dimensions variable

New work developed during Transforming Collections: Reimagining Art, Nation and Heritage Practice Research Residencies (2023-24) exploring the collections from Walker Art Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and Tate Britain

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Resembling a theatre set, Yu-Chen Wang's installation highlights the visual tropes used by museums founded in nineteenth-century Britain, a period marked by industrial development, economic progress and imperial expansion. The artist has researched the social relations and power dynamics that shaped institutions in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and London. Wang focusses on museum spaces, both the physical architecture and intangible systems of collecting and interpreting, and how these museums represent the relationship between art, industry and empire. Moving through the installation, the audience is encouraged to seek new perspectives, reflecting on how we perceive museum collections and narratives.

​Artist's Statement PDF​​​​​​​​​

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Transforming Collections: Reimagining Art, Nation and Heritage was a 3-year project led by University of the Arts London (UAL) Decolonising Arts Institute in collaboration with UAL Creative Computing Institute, and close partnership with Tate as an Independent Research Organisation. The additional 14 project partners were: Arts Council Collection, Art Fund, Art UK, Birmingham Museums Trust, British Council Collection, Contemporary Art Society, iniva (Institute of International Visual Art), JISC Archives Hub, Manchester Art Gallery, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), National Museums Liverpool, National Museums Scotland, Wellcome Collection, and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. 

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Transforming Collections was underpinned by the belief that a ‘national collection’ cannot be imagined without addressing structural inequalities and systemic biases in the arts. Acknowledging the contentious histories imbued in collection objects and their associated interpretations and data, the project combined critical art historical and museological research with participatory interactive machine learning design – to surface the sometimes uncomfortable stories that collections tell, while also re-evaluating artists and artworks, and opening up new interpretative frames and ‘potential histories’ (Azoulay, 2019).

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The Practice Research Residencies

Four artists, Evan Ifekoya, Christina Peake, Erika Tan and Yu-Chen Wang were selected through an open call process to undertake a 15-month practice research residency as part of the Transforming Collections project. Their research engaged with several UK museum collections, bringing experimental creative approaches to the project's questions around what and how museums collect and care, how artists and objects come to be ‘known’ (or ‘forgotten’), and the possibilities for interactive machine learning in sounding out archives, amplifying architectures and re-imagining kinship.​

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