LIVE / WORK

New York, NY

born / raised

1988, Taiwan

BIOGRAPHY

Born in Taiwan, WU Chia Yun 吳家昀 is an artist and filmmaker based in New York City. She received an MA in Visual Communication from the Royal College of Art and an MFA in Motion Picture from the National Taiwan University of Arts. Her works have been exhibited internationally at Taipei Biennial, LUMA Arles, ICA London, Royal Scottish Academy, the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Chiado, Art Basel HK, among others. Solo exhibitions include Photo London, the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Films have been selected for London Short Film Festival, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin and European Media Art Festival, and more. She has been awarded residencies by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Lithuanian Photographers Association. WU is the recipient of Dior Photography and Visual Artists Award for Young Talents and the Director’s Fellowship from the International Center of Photography. Her work has been featured in the Financial Times, Ocula, Artsy, ArtAsiaPacific, and more.

Artist Statement

The central themes in my work are about freedom, a sense of belonging, and nothingness. I make fiction films to explore the indescribable questions of life, using cinematic language to experiment with moving images, mixed media, and photography. In this manner, I investigate the spirits within the materials that unveil the essence of things and their connection with human condition. My work has expanded from film to installation to conceptual art, representing how politics and the outer world affect me as a person while responding to the inherent question of existence. Through transforming the concept of the filmmaking process, my work seeks to materialize image and sound into physical installations and extend time into travelable spaces. I consider my practice as a mise-en-scène of a director’s arrangement of everything that appears in the framing of a film. Alongside the expansion of cinema, I incorporate printmaking, drawing, and image-transfer techniques in order to create layered experiences in my lens-based works, reflecting a nomadic sense of identity, shaped by shifting relationships to family, homeland, and the world.