HONG WU 

 BROOKLYN, NYC

CREATIVE DISCIPLINE-

Multidisciplinary

PRIMARY MEDIUM(S)-
Upcycled materials

ARTIST STATEMENT-
My art is rooted in advocacy and public engagement. Promoting civic rights, immigration joy, and environmental protection are my areas of focus. Using multi-layer symbolism as an investigative tool, I invite my audience to decipher the meanings behind the motifs in my art, and build an interactive personal relationship that hopefully will provoke feelings and emotions that continue to evolve long after the visit is over. As a Chinese immigrant, I often dive into personal experiences and feelings for narratives that convey the feeling unique to immigrants, and interpret them into art form. With a textile design background, I often “weave” multiple materials into harmonious tactile textures that allow the audiences to "peel" off the layers of the art, and deepen the storytelling process. I describe the aesthetic of my art as “Controlled Chaos”. Sustainability drives my artistic practice. I always opt to use recycled or upcycled materials. In the short term, I hope to start a dialogue with my audiences through art; long term, my hope is that my audiences will seek creative collective ways to promote civic rights, immigration joy, environmental protection, and a lot more.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY-
Hong Wu is a self-taught multidisciplinary immigrant artist from Guangzhou, China. After a long career in men's fashion design, in 2020, she decided to commit to her artistic practice, with an emphasis on sustainability and advocacy. Hong’s work interrogates the social discourse rooted in Imperialism, Colonialism, Capitalism, and their relationships with recent social movements. She hopes to inspire collective creative solutions to make our world more just and green. She also aims to promote immigrant joy and representation, and to spark conversations among young children from immigrant families on engaging in promoting civic rights and responsibilities. With an emphasis in creative use of upcycled materials, Hong experiments with photography, illustration, textiles, mixed media and digital art, and continues to explore new media that extrapolate progressive messages. Hong often incorporates public interactive experience components in her works to challenge the audience's sensual and emotional responses. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Instagram-

@artbyhongwu