“Before there was a hill, there was a hole,” is a quote from an article about the Henry Palmisano park in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood. The article traces its history as a limestone quarry, where after 130 years of mining, the huge hole extended 380 feet below street level. From “trash to treasure,” the hole became a landfill for construction waste, before the dumping finally ended and this space began its new life as a fishing hole and beautiful wetland prairie park.
It is one of Wang’s favorite places in the city, and she thinks fondly about the digging/filling/overflow/reuse of that space. In her work, Wang often references quick phone photographs documenting sloppy traces of human activity around sites of urban industrial labour: boundary-making traffic objects as surrogate bodies, screenshots of Google Maps parking lots, and golden-hour light casting shadows against buildings and sidewalks.
In her studio, Wang also practices digging and dumping material such as screenshots, poems, sketches, colour swatches; reiterating ideas spanning across years as content for her artwork.
before there was a hill, there was a hole presents an interior look at the errant thoughts and preliminary lives of these scraps before they become “finished” objects.
wet tongues at midnight
Handwoven textile with cotton and acrylic and wool, acrylic on canvas
30 x 26 inches
2022
Peripheral details and imperceptible histories about our built environment hold meaning and narrative. Within her own work, Wang considers the ways architectural spaces become artifacts of memory, and what happens to our memories when the physical artifacts disappear or change. Through manipulation of material surfaces and perception, her work suggests that meaning and memory are often in flux, and thus, often written over and over again.
Sketch for Jacquard 3
Laser print and marker on paper
20 x 16
2021
whipped buttercream-smeared tarmac
Handwoven textile with cotton and acrylic and wool, acrylic on canvas
30 x 30 inches
2022
all roads lead to the parking lot
Handwoven textile with cotton and wool and reflective polyester and metallic plastic ribbon, acrylic on canvas
28 x 10 inches
2022
Sketch for Jacquard 1
Laser print and marker on paper
20 x 16
2021
prune feet fever dream
Handwoven textile with cotton and reflective polyester and wool, acrylic and spray paint and charcoal and pastel on canvas
44 x 38 inches
2022
lai hama (toad) croaks in the church yard
Handwoven textile with cotton and reflective polyester and wool, acrylic on canvas
42 x 28 inches
2022
Sketch for Jacquard 2
Laser print and marker on paper
20 x 16
2021