Xiao Hui Wang

Xiao Hui Wang

Artist, Author
Born Tianjin, China
Nationality Chinese

Xiao Hui Wang (Chinese: 王小慧; pinyin: Wáng Xiǎohuì) is a Chinese photographer, designer, filmmaker, sculptor, author and socialite born in Tianjin. Her work has been exhibited internationally and she has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, both in China and abroad. One contemporary art museum in China, the Xiao Hui Wang Art Museum in Suzhou, has been named after her.[1][2] She has been a professor at Shanghai's Tongji University since 2003, where she runs the Xiao Hui Wang Art Center. She spends time between Germany and China in numerous cultural activities.

Life

Xiao Hui Wang grew up during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, a hard time for "black" (politically suspect) cultural families such as hers (her mother was a music professor with family ties to Taiwan, and was eventually forced to live away from her and her father). In 1978, she enrolled at Tongji University to study architecture, receiving a bachelor's degree in the discipline in 1983.[3] A few years later, in 1986, she received a Masters in Design and Communications Science from the same university, and married classmate (and promising architect) Yu Lin.

Subsequently, as recipients of scholarships from the German government,[4] both she and her husband moved to Germany to study further. Between 1987 and 1991, she studied a PhD at the Technical University of Munich; and between 1990 and 1992, she studied at the Munich Film Academy. In 1991, on the way to Prague, a fatal car crash took her husband's life and left Wang in the hospital; during this time, she developed a greater interest in photography, documenting and exploring her recovery visually.

In 1992, after her recovery and aside from her photographic activities, she began working on numerous film and television projects in Germany. She wrote scripts for the Bayerischer Rundfunk series Kulturen der Welt in that same year; then, in 1993, she was a consultant for the Sino-German documentary Families in Beijing: Courtyard House. In 1994, she wrote and directed her surrealistic 35mm black-and-white film The Broken Moon, which follows a woman as she walks through the streets at night, encountering strange and allusive characters before coming upon a lake with the moon's reflection on it. As she reaches for it, the image disappears in a flurry of waves, symbolizing futility. The film and script won awards in Germany and Austria.[5]

In 1995, she was the artistic supervisor for The Chair, a Sino-Japanese production, and wrote a screenplay called Blue Candle Burnt Out. She directed a documentary film on Peking Opera in 1996.

In 2001, she became a professor at her alma mater, Tongji University, and founded the Xiao Hui Wang Art Center in 2003, which became the first research institute in China to focus on new media art. In 2007, the Center won the Shanghai Museum's international design competition for the 2010 Shanghai Expo Urban Footprint Theme Pavilion. Wang's growing reputation led to numerous commissions from international brands (Christofle, BMW, Cartier, A. Lange & Söhne, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Audi and Van Cleef & Arpels among others) and large-scale art projects from Chinese local governments.

Reception

Manfred Schneckenburger has described her as "an icon of progress for the younger generation despite the Chinese consciousness of tradition".[6] Her work has mainly focused on three great, occasionally overlapping themes: aestheticism, vitality and humanity. Art critic Beate von Reifenscheid, in an essay about her, wrote that:

"Xiao Hui Wang's photography has been characterized by an especially penetrating quality of vision - one that tells us about people, about the contexts of their lives, about existence at the limits of psychological endurance, about loneliness and despair. However, she also traces the beauty of the human figure in her photos, the erotic tension between man and woman, the lives of women in seedy 'clubs', and even the eroticism of flowers, whose charged sexuality goes beyond that of Robert Mapplethorpe's black-and-white photographs".[7]

Zhang Jianxing, Chairman of the Tianjin Photography Association, considers it immanently metaphorical, writing "Why are Xiao Hui Wang's many moments so powerful? The answer lies in the fact that what she captures with the lens of her camera is not only concrete objects, but also the spirit that is innate in those objects (...). The flowers in Xiao Hui Wang's photos are not flowers, water is not water, fog is not fog".[8] Her art has also been considered intensely personal: Chinese art historian Gu Zheng called her self-portraits the "most brutally honest (...) in the history of photography".[9] Art critic and professor Victoria Lu, describing her art as "the continuous record of her life", compares her to Frida Kahlo.[10]

Photographic Series

Films

Books[11]

Awards

References

  1. ↑ http://www.vantageshanghai.com/en/arts/2013/11/xiao-hui-wang-boundless-creativity.html
  2. ↑ http://www.exhdesign.com/en/projects_detail.php?id=4295
  3. ↑ http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiao_Hui_Wang
  4. ↑ http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiao_Hui_Wang
  5. ↑ http://app1.chinadaily.com.cn/star/2001/1213/pr21-1.html
  6. ↑ Manfred Schneckenburger, "The Liberated Camera", Introspection, Hirmer, Munich, 2012, p. 24
  7. ↑ Beate von Reifenscheid, "Introspection", Introspection, Hirmer, Munich, 2012, p. 14
  8. ↑ Zhang Jianxing, "Tranquility That Starts from Life and Finally Returns to Life", A-Live, Gu Ji Publishing House, Zhengzhou, 2005, p. 12
  9. ↑ Manfred Schneckenburger, "The Liberated Camera", Introspection, Hirmer, Munich, 2012, p. 23
  10. ↑ Victoria Lu, "A-Live: Total Art of Xiao Hui Wang", A-Live, Gu Ji Publishing House, Zhengzhou, 2005, p. 19
  11. ↑ https://portal.dnb.de/opac.htm?method=simpleSearch&query=115786392
  12. ↑ http://www.yoka.com/club/shotmessage/2010/0716364969.shtml
  13. ↑ http://sports.eastday.com/eastday/shnx/node3811/node4005/userobject1ai1255159.html
  14. ↑ http://sports.eastday.com/eastday/shnx/node3811/node4005/userobject1ai1255159.html
  15. ↑ http://news.artron.net/20070514/n26125.html
  16. ↑ http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrbhwb/html/2010-12/07/content_692199.htm
  17. ↑ http://www.investorchina.com.cn/article-12754-1.html
  18. ↑ http://women.sohu.com/20120319/n338216672.shtml

External links