Evelyn Taocheng Wang: Spreading Elegance

Exhibition curator: Marie Griffay

Spreading Elegance, the first monographic exhibition of Chinese-Dutch artist Evelyn Taocheng Wang in France, will be held at the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne.

With references to both social networks and great literature, Evelyn Taocheng Wang questions the notion of identity as a moving concept, intrinsically linked to space and time. Although Evelyn Taocheng Wang’s work is made up of contradictions,—between its use of traditional and modern techniques, individual narrative and collective memory, and in its fusion of Eastern and Western references—it nevertheless sketches the contours of a slightly less binary reality which participate in the free flow of imagination.

Spreading Elegance[1] is a new and ambitious installation that questions body representation and social images. In it, Evelyn Taocheng Wang uses her own clothes to dress her friends, making them the models of an imaginary fashion show. Excerpts from their epistolary exchanges find their way into rice-paper drawings by the artist, where she disconcertingly mirrors the writing of the authors.

Especially designed for the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, this new show also features three works by Franco-Japanese painter Léonard Foujita (1886-1968), an icon of modernity and closely linked to the city of Reims. This is an encounter of sorts between two artists who in their respective work freely explore the classical representations of male and female bodies in Western art. Elegance, like confusion, spreads.  

The exhibition also allows visitors to discover Evelyn Taocheng Wang’s video work through three recent films that showcase the body, clothing and architecture. In Dusk, acquired in 2018 by the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Evelyn Taocheng Wang revisits the atmosphere and composition of classical Dutch painting. The films Three Versions of Change and Hospital Conversation—in direct resonance with the history of the FRAC building, a former Jesuit college used as a hospital for almost two centuries—present anonymous bodies, transformed by the process of pain and healing.

With the support of Mondriaan Fonds and the Dutch Embassy

Evelyn Taocheng Wang​
Born in 1981 in Chengdu, China. Lives and works in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

She studied painting in China and continued her education at the Städelschule Academy of Fine Art in Frankfurt. From 2012 to 2014, Evelyn Taocheng Wang attended De Ateliers in Amsterdam. She has exhibited her work at the ICA (London, 2017), the KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin, 2018), S.M.A.K. (Ghent, 2019), and at TENT (Rotterdam, 2019), where she was awarded the Dolf Henkes Prize. Her performances have been presented at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, 2015) and Documenta14 (Cassel, 2017). Her next performance will take place at the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne on 9 February 2020 as part of the FAR away festival. 

[1] The second chapter of the Four Season of Women Tragedy project, initiated by the Fons Welters Gallery, Amsterdam, 2017.