Today we’d like to introduce you to Felix Xiao-Yu Wang.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I’m a San Francisco-born Chinese-American lesbian artist/career woman, living and working in Los Angeles. Currently, I’m working in museum education, and I want to be a voice pushing to make art education more accessible. Before I became comfortable with myself as a gay artist, I tried so hard to be a straight scientist. I initially aimed to be a neuroscience major and even had experience doing lab work (histology) at a rat brain lab. Well, I failed chemistry, dropped out of college, had family members die, and got threatened with a knife. It took all of that for me to say, “fuck it, I’m out of here, and I’m gonna take loans to go to art school in Los Angeles.” And Los Angeles has been home since!
I am so happy to have joined an artist community here. Back in January, before the pandemic hit the US, I had the honor of taking part in a powerful WOC art show with some of my closest friends from school.
We’d love to hear more about your art.
My art is inspired by ancestral worship, rave glasses, and water. Through painting and filmmaking, I create psychological landscapes that explore spirituality, memory, and time. I am interested in the disorganized nature of memory and the transformation of entities.
The rainbows in my work refer to 1) themes of transformation, 2) the maximalist Cantonese aesthetic I grew up with, and 3) how I have grown into my own disco ball brand of queerness. I collage together images of home and images of altars with queer symbols that are not necessarily queer, as a way of exploring the many facets of identity, and how we ourselves may transform over the course of a lifetime.
Given everything that is going on in the world today, do you think the role of artists has changed? How do local, national or international events and issues affect your art?
As artists, we are making artifacts that will help future humans study this historical era. We serve as record keepers of the waves of societal thought. Many of us think the same thoughts, but artists are especially adept at tapping into the subconscious to summon visuals for those collective feelings. The role of artists hasn’t changed, but I believe art from this era will have a long legacy given the precedence of this pandemic and the fear surrounding it.
Lately, I have been using drawing as a medium to organize my memories and my things. I have been making work that is introspective in a direction I did not expect.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
You can go to my website www.hiuyifelix.com and check out my Instagram @hiuyifelix. I was hoping that the physical as-planned BFA exhibition at my school would help me get more opportunities exhibiting my work, but for now, because so much is on hold, our class had the initiative to make a book together and collaborate on two web exhibitions! Both the web exhibition Sanitized (https://sanitized.online/) and the Otis College of Art and Design Annual Exhibition (https://www.otis.edu/annual-
Contact Info:
- Website: hiuyifelix.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: instagram.com/hiuyifelix
- Other: https://vimeo.com/hiuyifelix
Image Credit:
Studio Portrait taken by Sydney Busic
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