Today we’d like to introduce you to Pengwei Wang.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I was born in Changsha, China, the spiciest city in China; raised in Toronto, Canada, one of the blandest metropolis in the world; educated back and forth between strict exam based Chinese middle school and slack “fun activities” based Canadian education. Fed different religions since I was three, it’s been in my nature to question everything around me, because things just weren’t adding up, the world has never quite made sense to me. I’ve always been drawn to expression, either through imitating my friends and family or recording my own thoughts using the family camcorder, writing short stories about desperate people going to extreme lengths to achieve their goals, and eventually found shooting videos and editing them to be the most rewarding of them all. However, I had never seriously considered becoming an artist full time (I spent most of my life preparing for law school) until the last year of college. It was after interning and working in the corporate world that I realized I cannot possibly give my life over to these people, to simply allow my time to be used by these people, I decided to never waste a day doing something I’d rather not be doing. I always had a frail body, my health was never the best, and I’ve been undergoing surgeries since birth, I have multiple surgery scars all over my body, so I think it’s only natural that I have a different outlook to other healthy people who don’t feel the weight of their own mortality as strongly as I do. How do you sit in an office filing paperwork and crunching numbers for people you’ll never meet when all you can think about is the fact that you may die any second. It’s nearly impossible. I’m dedicating my life to creating things that may or may not make a difference in society and on people.
Please tell us about your art.
I’m a writer and director. I create short videos, that try to bend the gap between what goes on in one’s mind and our environment. My fever dreams that I frequently had throughout my sickly childhood haunted me deeply, so much so that now everything is somehow perpetually warped. I want to recreate and explain that “warp” I feel inside through editing images, recorded human behavior, and sound. I am striving to shoot a feature-length film within the next two years, but for now, I am occupied with music videos, short films, and experimental (often comedic) shorts. The message is that this world is a very odd place, and we are very odd animals. I hope people walk away from my work feeling that nothing is for granted, that life is extremely fickle, and we should approach everything with a sense of humor because without humor we would collectively lose our minds.
Do you have any advice for other artists? Any lessons you wished you learned earlier?
I’m quite young and new to this so I don’t know how much advice I can give, I still hesitate to introduce myself as an artist. It’s just so foreign to me, a few years ago, I was still in my UCLA dorm room preparing for the LSAT. I would say, try some different things, and see the world if you can, if not the world, the country, if not the country, then the city, if not the city then the countryside. Just don’t stay in one place, because the earth is small enough as it is, compared to the vastness of space, how can you expect to create something that resonates without ever leaving your hometown? Do something, anything, just don’t stay put. I wish I knew to just make things, and don’t be afraid of failing or not even completing your project. Just do something, anything. Write, all you need is a pencil and paper. It’s the most easily accessible form of art and is the basis for almost everything. I’ve always been afraid, so I would just read voraciously, but reading 100 books and never putting pen to paper, you would still be a novice at creation.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
I have a website: https://www.wpwfilms.com/ where I routinely update with new work.
I do not have a support system in place as of now.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2045 S State College Blvd, 118
- Website: https://www.wpwfilms.com/
- Phone: 3105709584
- Email: wpwfilm@hotmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dewang___/
Image Credit:
Jiaxing Huang, Ai Chung, Limbo Lin1
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