“Consumer of (goods), Victim of Constructed ideas, which fantasize, Its own novelty.” This statement is scrawled on one of the assemblages in Wang’s recent installation A Thing Like You and Me at the New York gallery Olympia. Curator Ali Rossi points out that Wang’s use of cheap mass-produced goods “reflects her fluctuation between Chinese and U.S. ideologies as she considers the collective versus individual paradigm.” Rossi, evoking the narrative fluidity of the artist’s work, states: “We are here, there, virtual, deceased—a literal embodiment of past, present, and future.”
In this interview, Zi Yi Wang discusses her conception of trash history, nostalgia, and the challenges of working in multiple temporalities.
—Sophia Park
For me, a general definition of “trash” is something that is no longer important and is supposed to be thrown out. Memories can be trashed as well. History, too, can be erased, and there are limitations on how we define ultimately what is “useful.” When I see something on the street, I wonder how it got there. Sometimes a trash bag pressed many times by perhaps thousands of cars gains its own special quality.
Walter Benjamin introduced the concept of “aura” in his essay “The Work of Art in the Mechanical Age of Reproduction.” Benjamin’s essay inspired me to collect trash, and thus to become part of my history. At the moment of picking up an item of trash, there’s nearly always an aura to the object, which is different than when I discover it again in my “trash collection.”
So, “trash history” begins with accepting this default mode, its defects and constructed ideas. Then, accepting becomes a way of understanding.
I am not only collecting trash, but also memories. While walking down the street, let’s say, I might see something that intrigues me or sparks a memory; this might have to do with its context or simply its shape, color, or functionality. I identify with the object or material, add another layer to it, and build trash history. I am sculpting and making manifest in these objects a silhouette or an outer shape influenced by the actions of trashing and collecting.
Your assemblages include text and other forms of mark-making, a language that is uniquely tied to how you view the world. How has your language developed?
I think the first part of this language is understanding the environment of an object or the relationship between materials and the intangible, as we are in this flux of identities, information, systems, cultures, and languages. We all position ourselves within a library of our own memories, theories, and fundamental values. But as our surroundings transform quickly, how do we position and re-position ourselves in an ever-changing environment? This is not a problem that a system or a machine can resolve. Answers begin with a critical, but also accepting, perspective. My language is an assemblage of hybrid cultures, aesthetics, and values, with the hope of producing a fresh, possibly unstable, but slowly transformative process.
I also take a lot of notes during the process of collecting trash, documenting my understanding of the moment. This documentation may be through journaling, found objects, or drawing. I then collage these elements in an assemblage, and this becomes my language.
What is the role of nostalgia in your work?
Obviously, not all of one’s past is positive. There is collective trauma as well as private traumatic experiences, but I try to take something positive from each of my experiences. Nostalgia, for me, is this ultimate utopia that I create for myself. Collecting as a way of documenting is not bound by time; it is a process that is infinite. Nostalgia is a constant reflection on the past that I try to preserve. Sometimes it’s my way of coping.
The images and videos I create have a washed-out quality to them, and none of the installations are permanent. Often, when we return to things of the past, we find them oddly different from what we remembered, but we try to preserve a memory of warmth. I want to transcribe or translate the ever-changing authenticity of the environment, as I observe my past and present, and possibly extract something for the future, whether it is negative, positive, or contradictory.
So, in a way, nostalgia becomes a tool to build something else, perhaps a version of your utopia.
I like this word “tool.” Once, I identified with the word “nostalgia,” in the sense that I am a nostalgic person. There are memories that I have a hard time letting go of. I become obsessed with preserving these memories. What is in this nostalgia that I worship so much that I hope to preserve?
In order to create something new, how do you balance what you know versus what you don’t know?
I am standing in the middle of flux, as a person with my subjective truths, opinions, and ideas. Understanding myself and my environment as a four-dimensional space, in the sense that I need to look in all directions temporally, whether it’s past or future, west or east. Understanding what has been embedded in the environment with me as a protagonist. The last sense that fulfills this four-dimensional space is my consciousness, as it tries to balance and decode all these “understandings.” This effort of trying to balance the past and future while standing in the present time is reflected in my work. I hope viewers see my struggle to look at the past, my history, and the future.
Your work is informed by both your history in China and your current life in the United States. How has your experience as an immigrant shaped your artistic practice?
At one point, I felt like a voyeur of my culture. The United States was an unfamiliar environment, and I felt detached from my culture and my previous understanding of everything. I felt this sort of abandonment, whether that meant I felt abandoned or I had abandoned my past self, I’m not sure.
Later, I was pulled between Eastern and Western ideologies, wanting to be part of both but feeling that I had to choose. I longed for belonging and identification. I felt stuck in the middle. I realized that my sense of self comes from my origins but, still, I didn't quite understand where I came from. Of course, it is a constant learning process.
I started working with Chinatown 99-cent store objects, which I felt most connected me to being in New York. I collected food packaging, baby posters, tablecloths, and started playing around with these objects. And I let accidents like trash fall upon me. Anything that gave me a sense of security through familiarity, or that reminded me of childhood.
In China, the collective is so concentrated, and you must have a collective sense at all times; you almost lose your sense of self. Then, coming here, the sense of self is so concentrated. I’m always trying to find a balance between the self and the collective.
