Considerate Creations: Chameleons

June 16 – July 14, 2017
Curated by LEE I-Hua

Artists｜CHEN Hui-Chiao, HU Nung-Hsin, TSAI Hai-Ru, WANG Te-Yu, Ali WONG/WONG Kit-Yi
Opening Reception｜Friday, June 16, 6 – 8 pm
Media Preview｜Thursday, June 16, 3 – ​5 pm
Venue｜Chinese American Arts Council / Gallery 456, 456 Broadway, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10013

Talk｜Wednesday, June 21, 6:30 pm
Venue｜Asia Art Archive in America, 43 Remsen Street (Garden Floor) Brooklyn, NY 11201, US
​RSVP Here

WANG Te-Yu, NO.84, fabric, fan, trampoline, 2016, dimensions variable. Photo by LIN Wei-Lung, courtesy of the artist.

inCube Arts and Chinese American Arts Council / Gallery 456 are pleased to present Considerate Creations: Chameleons, an exhibition that brings together the work of five female artists: CHEN Hui-Chiao, HU Nung-Hsin, TSAI Hai-Ru, WANG Te-Yu and Ali WONG/WONG Kit-Yi.

Considerate Creations: Chameleons is a sequel of Considerate Creations, which was presented in Taipei Artist Village in 2015 and will be touring to New York this year. This exhibition focuses on artists’ practice life in between different roles. Curated by art manager Lee I-Hua, who plays a dual role as an artist, the exhibition features works by female artists who wear many hats, from art directors, curators, museum staffs, archivists, to wives and moms. Taiwanese artists CHEN Hui-Chiao, WANG Te-Yu, and TSAI Hai-Ru are invited to exhibit with New York-based artists HU Nung-Hsin and Ali WONG/ WONG Kit-Yi.
 
The exhibition title is an implication that art administrators are the gentle operators behind the curtain. And this “amphibious” lifestyle is very common among artists and the art world. Many artists naturally develop a more flexible type of career, since arts and culture sector covers a huge range of artistic practices, and selling artwork is no longer necessary in terms of art making. Cross–disciplinary practice is a common state, and contemporary artists are commonly acquired a diverse skillset. Lee categorized this group of art professionals, whose contribution cannot be overlooked, as “Chameleons artists”. “Chameleons artist” is a global phenomenon in the art world, and it says a certain quality of this business. They provide a novel viewpoint of various of issues, and the outcome is fluid and influential.
 
While preparing for this project which discusses artists with multiple positions, Lee got pregnant and felt grateful that she could practice the role of motherhood. She approaches the pregnancy as if she is involved in an art performance, as an artist and art administrator becoming a mother. In the many different sides of a “Chameleon artist”, motherhood is the hardest one for men to understand. An artist to be in this unique position exclusively for female, decided to embrace the role of a mother or wife deliberately; such experience in life could transform into a fountain of inspiration. After Tsai Hai-Ru became a mother, she shifted her attention from oneself to communicating with others gradually. She uses creating artwork as an interface between self-construction and connecting with the outside world. While handling her Father-in-law’s collection in 2016, she founded the long anticipated Haiton Art Center. Among positions like a mother, wife and more, Tsai’s goal is more than creating art. In the reflection of founding the art center, she also wants to alter subjects that often got neglected in the social discourse. Unfortunately, however reflecting the reality, Tsai cannot be at the exhibition because she is occupied with the role of a mother. She bravely interprets the struggle and grit of a female artist, just like her work No.Yes.Yes.No.
 
CHEN Hui-Chiao has run IT Park for nearly three decades. Not being satisfied to simply focus on her own art, Chen is also like a mother looking after many children. In addition to the artistic value of her own creations, she joined forces with a group of artists to co-found a space run by artists. IT Park has become a responsibility close to her heart, and through the special quality of its space, the content of its art, and the role it plays in fostering criticism and discussion, it has made an indelible contribution to the development of Taiwanese contemporary art. Happily busy as both artist and director, she lives a rich, balanced life, but of course, this state of contentment has only been achieved through a host of tests and struggles. Her work is with simplicity and full of personal emotions, mirroring perhaps the clear consciousness beyond the loud and messy world. The intuitive aesthetics internalized with herself is fluently presented in many projects.
 
Currently working in the exhibition department of Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, artist WANG Te-Yu also teaches in University. As a part of her work, she often comes in contact with other artists and groups, and the succession of exhibitions she has organized has allowed her to absorb a diversity of insights. Unlike the dimension of thought at play when making art in isolation, when Wang focuses her creative energies on that unique moment of perception that takes place between viewer and artwork, the everyday work of art administration magically infuses her art with ever more bountiful visual perspectives. The people with which she interacts in her work, and the sensory experiences bound up with people, have naturally developed a special importance in her art.
 
HU Nung-Hsin currently works in the Artist Studio Residency Program and New New Yorkers Program at the Queens Museum, New York; her practice strives to represent the relationship of inner self and the outside world. The experience of years of living in the multicultural New York city has transformed Hu’s work, especially working closely with local community. Her work was more about expressing the self-reflection of living abroad and being independent. And gradually it transformed into a learning process and deep concern for different cultures and diversity. A various of administrative positions have expanded the way she sees her own practice. Her work Corpus Callosum uses both the administrative and exhibiting areas in the gallery, presenting the challenges of switching roles between artist and art administrator in a physiologic angle. WONG Kit-Yi (Ali WONG) works at Asia Art Archive in New York, and she is also a conceptual artist. Switching between two roles, she calls herself WONG Kit-Yi when as an artist, and Ali Wong as an art administrator/curator; The self awareness of double identity weaves her works together. In this exhibition, she presents the same work differently in the narratives of two identities: WONG Kit-Yi and Ali WONG.

When one applies the uniqueness and professional training she/he possesses as an artist to the purpose of art administration and business management, it seems like a natural-born talent, as one puts to good effect the aesthetic cultivation she/he has internalized. Moreover, one’s vision and ambition are different from those of the non-artist, exhibiting irreplaceable intuition and judgment that have borne rich fruit. These “Chameleons artists” take on multiple roles to make sure that they can secure the pursuit of their dreams. It’s a statement of dedication to art, and a expectation of Considerate Creations. We look forward to seeing this movement, and this group of artists bringing more insights and positive value into the art world and beyond. And especially we salute to these gentle “Chameleons artists”.
 
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
CHEN Hui-Chiao (b.1964, Tamsui, Taiwan) was one of the founders of IT Park Gallery in Taipei. She is also one of only a handful of female artists from Taiwan currently active on the international art scene. After the pieces Within Me, Without Me in Space, Within Space (1997) and Then Sleep, My Love (1998) Chen’s renown grew and the solo exhibition Here and Now at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, in 2006, confirmed her status as a star in the firmament of contemporary Taiwanese art.
In Taiwan, Chen is known for the new standards she has established in her dual role, first as director of IT Park Gallery, widely considered an important “promoter of modern art.” IT Park Gallery was established in 1988 and in 2009 was awarded the 13th Taipei Culture Award. In that timeframe, Chen’s works have earned her a reputation as something of an enigma in Taiwan’s contemporary arts scene, known for pushing extremely simple materials to their limits and using them to explore new territory. Chen has been invited to show works at numerous international exhibitions. These include: Everyday Miracles (Extended) at the SFAI Walter and McBean Galleries and REDCAT in Los Angeles, 10th Istanbul Biennial and the Gwangju Biennial (2002) in South Korea. She also participated in Face to Face – Contemporary Art from Taiwan a touring group exhibition of art museums in Australia, Inside Out – New Chinese Art a touring group exhibition of art museums in the US and the Osaka Triennale 1996/7th International Contemporary Art Competition. Chen’s works have been collected by art galleries and private art collectors across Taiwan and she has served as a judge at the SANCF Award, Taipei Artist Village, Taipei Arts Award and the National Award of Arts. Since 2006, Chen has also been the recommended consultant for Taiwanese artists at the Glenfiddich Artists’ Village in Scotland.

HU Nung-Hsin (b.1981, Taiwan) is a Taiwanese born visual artist and an art administrator currently based in New York. As a multidisciplinary artist, Hu’s artistic practice often applies installation, performance, video and photography as the media, and develops the concept through the lenses of psychology and physiology to reflect her investigation, suspicion, and confrontation with her surrounding environment and phenomena. Hu has exhibited both in the U.S. and abroad including Porn and Politics, Galerie Levy-Delval, Brussels (2016); Montage Express, Oil Street, Hong Kong (2016); Diverge, SCOPE, New York (2014); eine Minute- ein Held, Rennbahn, Berlin (2014); SUSHI, Union Square, New York(2014); Bedtime Stories, Water Tower Art Festival, Bulgaria (2012); Year Zero  Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, New York (2011); Sweet Home, DUMBO Arts Festival, New York (2011); Videoart Cycle, Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires (2011). Hu also received various grants and residencies including the Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, Queens Council on the Arts – New Work Grant, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning – Van Lier Fellowship, the Taiwan Ministry of Culture, the International Residency and Cultural Exchange Grant, the Casa das Caldeiras residency in São Paulo, the Taipei Artist Village residency in Taipei, the Lichtenberg Studios in Berlin, and the Arctic Circle Residency.

TSAI Hai-Ru (b.1967, Taiwan) lives and works in Taipei. Tsai considers creating artwork is a conversation, learning, and interpreting process between self and society. Her body of work is closely connected to different phases in her life, and in the meantime breaking away from the frame of her supposed role. Tsai exhibited at Taipei Biennale in Taipei Fine Arts Museum (1998), in which she tried to open a discussion of female caretakers. Major exhibitions include Dance of the Dotted Line (2008), curatorial project Joy Luck's Mirror Garden (2014)…, etc. Extended from her dinner project Haiton Kitchen, Tsai founded Haiton Art Center in 2016. She is the director and curator of Haiton Art Center.

WANG Te-Yu (b.1970, Taiwan) received M.F.A. Fine Arts from the Taipei National University of the Arts in 2005, works and lives in Taipei. Wang Te-Yu's works have always sought simple ideas. She has always tried to explore the feeling of spatial presence with an extreme economy of media, and goes on to meditate on the existential form and situation of people in these spaces. In 1990 she began spreading out a pure spatial form with fabrics of different material, and this has become a primary motif in the artist's work. In a series of spatial creations named with serial numbers, she has pursued continuous research into the spatial theme, transforming the subjective / objective relationship between spaces and people, and letting the body's sensory experience replace visual experience. In this way the interactive experience between viewers and works functions directly as a pathway that the artist provides for "entry" into the spirit of the work—a work that symbolizes the artist's subjective consciousness. The work also unexpectedly encompasses the participating viewer's subjective experience and constructs a commonly-sensed space through the mechanism of interaction. Wang has held 14 solo exhibitions since 1995 and participated in various international exhibitions including Taipei Biennial in Taipei Fine Arts Museum (1996), Promenade in Asia in Art Tower Mito, Japan(2001), 4e Biennale d'Art Contemporain in Enghien-les-Bains, France (2002), Yokohama Triennale 2005, City on the Move Art Festival in Taipei (2006).
 
Ali WONG/WONG Kit-Yi
WONG Kit-Yi lives in New York. She received her MFA from Yale University in 2012. Her work has appeared recently in the solo shows Futures, Again (2017), P!, New York; Sandwich Theory: convertible painting series (2016), a.m. space, Hong Kong; and North Pole Futures (2015), K. gallery, New York. She has also taken part in the group exhibitions regarding lightness: On Life’s Way (2015), Oil Street, Hong Kong; Bringing the World into the World (2014), Queens Museum, New York; The Ceiling Should Be Green (2013), P! gallery, New York. In 2015, Wong participated in an Arctic Circle expeditionary residency with partial support from the Jerome Foundation. She previously received the Susan H. Whedon Award (2012) from Yale University and Cheung’s Creative Award (2006) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and was a Sovereign Asian Art Prize finalist (2005). Wong's work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America, Contemporary Art Daily, e-flux conversations, ARTnews, Asian Art News, The Art Newspaper, Art Asia Pacific, China Daily and Modern Painters. The artist speaks native Cantonese, fluent English, and hysterical Mandarin.
Ali WONG is an independent curator based in New York. Currently working at the Asia Art Archive in America, Wong holds a BA in fine arts from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She previously worked at the nonprofit 1a space in Hong Kong and as an assistant to artists Tony Labat and Takashi Murakami. Ali Wong divides her time between being herself and the conceptual artist Wong Kit-Yi.

ABOUT THE CURATOR
LEE I-Hua (b.1982, Taiwan) is a curator and visual artist based in Taiwan. She holds a master’s degree in Studio Art: Art in Media from New York University. Lee currently works as the manager of curatorial and artist-in-residence program in Taipei Artist Village and Treasure Hill Artist Village. She was a project manager at artist Cai Guo-Qiang's studio in New York, and is the founder and chief editor for an independent curatorial journal Chuan Art which was launched in 2011.
Lee has exhibited her works in such venues as the Museum of Contemporary Art Studio in Taipei, Apexart and ISE Cultural Foundation in New York, the Newspace Center for Photography in Portland, and the Woman Made Gallery in Chicago. Her first artist book Short Conversation was published in 2009, which later was granted by the National Culture and Arts Foundation and exhibited in Garden City Gallery in Taipei. Her curatorial projects include: Considerate Creations, Taipei Artist Village, Taiwan (2015), You Are the Sunshine of my Life – Treasure Hill Light Festival, Taiwan (2017), and Considerate Creations: Chameleons, Taiwan Academy and Gallery 456, New York (2017).

For more information please contact: info@incube-arts.org and info@caacarts.org
This exhibition is presented in collaboration with Chinese American Arts Council / Gallery 456, organized by Taipei Cultural Center of TECO in New York and Taipei Artist Village, sponsored by Ministry of Culture, R.O.C. (Taiwan), supported by inCube Arts.