Wong, Katarina

Other Names: 黃妙雲

"I come from a long line of migrators: my father is from China and my mother from Cuba and I was born in the U.S., but float, as Federico Garcia Lorca puts it, 'between contrary equilibriums'. I find myself in the odd position of inhabiting three cultures, yet also arguably not claimed fully by anyone of them.
My current work draws on the Buddhist concept of interdependent arising which basically asserts that what we experience as reality is really a co-creative experience depending entirely on everyone and everything's constant participation. The work focuses on how those inextricable linkages function in the context of individual and group dynamics.
The work shown here link the ideas of personal migration, identity and interdependence. They result from a longer process that begins by collecting molds of friends' fingertips, casting them in wax and mounting them in patterns mimicking migratory patters (e.g., how birds flock, insects swarm, or animals move in herds) on simple light blue fields painted directly on the wall. Shadows are then painted in with sumi-ink and sometimes powdered graphite.
The co-creative acts of relationships, migration, and ultimately reality all float in the space of imminence, on the verge of becoming something familiar yet also unknown. It is that space I am interested in creating in my work."

Katarina Wong, Artist Statement on "Fingerprint Project"

Gallery of Selected Works

Everybody Wong Chung'd That Night (2007) Cascade Co (2002) Fingerprint Project: The Laws of Intersection & Union (2002) Fingerprint Project: Alli Flota (2000) Root Circle I (2000) Untitled Room, Brush Marks & Rug (1996) Making Blue (1995) The Washing (Martha/Mary) (1994)