Acknowledgements
We are pleased to present the exhibition "Ex/Ordinary: Wen Fang and the Power of Image Making," featuring the photographic and participatory work of contemporary Chinese artist Wen Fang. This exhibition is an art historical research-oriented and student-engaged project, organized by the Exhibition Design class of fall 2019 with the guidance of their instructor Dr. Meiqin Wang.
We would like to thank Jim Sweeters, CSUN Art Galleries Director, and Erika Ostrander, Art Galleries Office Manager, for their support and work that brought the realization of this exhibition. The Instructionally Related Activities committee at CSUN and The China Institute generously provided funds for the implementation of this exhibition. The Art Galleries provided the space and operational support for the display of the exhibition. The Art Department provided the curriculum setting that enabled this students-and-instructor collaborative project.
We also want to express our thanks to artist Wen Fang for her daring experiments in making photographic art and initiating socially conscious participatory art.
Dr. Meiqin Wang
On behalf of all students from Exhibition Design classes Art 342 (Art Department, Fall 2019
Curator Statements
Ex/Ordinary: Wen Fang and the Power of Image Making
Wen Fang is a contemporary Chinese artist who has ventured deep into the field of socially engaged art since 2009. Freely transgressing among photography, installation, sculpture, embroidery, performance art, among others, she has implemented several socially conscious and participatory art projects that not only respond to various social problems brought about by China's rapid and uneven socioeconomic development but also point to the possibilities of new ways of collaboration and mutual support among people of different social backgrounds. In particular, she has endeavored to engage disenfranchised social groups and individuals in China into art making and benefiting from their own creative labor. She apparently upholds a strong faith in art making, and by extension, image making, as a way of personal empowerment for both herself and ordinary people involved.
This research-oriented exhibition traces the origin of Wen's creative energy and looks into the beginning of her artistic career as a photographer. The artist says that she has always been interested in ordinary things that are commonplace and her art seeks to develop relationships with them while accentuating the transformative power of art. This effort and ability are apparent in two of her earliest series that are included in the show.
The Ideal World, a photographic series on human bodies that Wen began in 2005 and retouched in 2019, expresses her understanding of the close affiliation between human body and nature. She sees graceful forms of vales and hills, clouds and plants, light and shade in body parts from ordinary people and appreciates the traces that embody the interaction of growth and decay, of order and chaos, of yin and yang as they play out in human bodies just like they do so in nature.
Wall, which she shot in 2006, continues Wen's akin interest in observing the effect of natural forces (which include that of human beings) on man-made world, this time, walls, and captures "the thousands of changes" that have left their traces on these walls through her camera lens. We are presented with the wonder of lines, shapes, textures, and colors whose interplay inspires imaginary readings as sky, clouds, snowy lands, turbulent flows, fantastic beasts, among others.
Also included in the show in the form of a short video is Maskbook, a participatory public art project that Wen initiated in 2015 in Paris with the sponsorship of the international organization Art of Change 21. The project invites people across the world to make masks from found materials or digitally to address the connections between health, air pollution, and climate change. This work has enabled thousands of ordinary people to express their concern for the environmental crisis and join the growing global civil society through making masks and sharing photographs of them.
Through fourteen photographs and a video, this exhibition highlights Wen's unique artistic vision and ability to transform the ordinary into significant and meaningful visual manifestations that either express the unfathomable force of nature or enable ordinary citizens to express themselves through image making.