Somnium/梦中人

Yongqi Tang (Born 1997, Shenzhen) opens her first exhibition Somnium/梦中人 at the gallery on Thursday April 6, 2023.

Having studied and worked in both China and the United States, Yongqi Tang’s artistic practice has been influenced by two vastly different cultural and ideological contexts. Her curiosity for exploring the ways in which sense of place and self interact leads her to investigate the social and spatial construction of identity. With a particular emphasis on the fluidity of our self-image, her works deals with ambiguity, gender and nationality. Tang’s primary objective is to reinterpret categories into which we are born and to re-articulate the discourse around them.

Tang’s current work portrays liminal spaces between public and private, investigating how Chinese immigrants conceive themselves through surrounding environments and external self-concepts. Identity is treated as a doubling phenomenon where people are both themselves and a project they make of themselves. Using the dining experience as an entry point, Tang’s representation often turns to moments of union and shared space. In this way, she is able to approach the issues of displacement and settlement simultaneously, as her figures are creating a sense of place rather than the environments, which are often interior spaces with a table at the center. The dining table is a poetic anchor for origin as a thing that is present in all homes and can be found anywhere, but with the specificity of whomever is sitting at the table.

Working in a variety of mediums, oil, watercolor, acrylic and charcoal, Tang often creates multiple studies of the same composition, with each version bringing forth new elements and moods. Tang’s fluid movement through mediums is also a reflection of her approach to self-image and the broader human experience.

Yongqi Tang received an MFA from the University of Washington, ’22. She is the recipient of the Bernie Funk Artist Scholarship, Boyer and Elizabeth Bole Gonzales Scholarship for Excellence, and the Puget Sound Group of Northwest Artists Scholarship Award. She was an artist in residence at the Field Projects Gallery, NY, and is currently one of the artists in residence at the Amazon 2023 AIR Program. Her works have been reviewed by New American Paintings, Shoutout LA, Al-Tiba 9 Contemporary Art, and Maake Magazine.