Evelyn Taocheng Wang

Evelyn Taocheng Wang
Evelyn Taocheng Wang in 2020
Born1981 (age 44–45)
Chengdu, China
OccupationArtist
Known forContemporary art, painting, performance art

Evelyn Taocheng Wang (born 1981) is a Chinese contemporary artist[1][2] whose work spans multiple disciplines and is known for mapping "how language, custom and culture shape identity."[3]

Life

Wang was born in 1981 in Chengdu, China, where in high school she studied Soviet Realism, the Russian avant-garde, and European modernism.[4][5] Wang later attended Nanjing Normal University, where she studied Chinese classical literature, calligraphy, and landscape painting.[4]

Wang has noted that while her formal art training began with historic Chinese landscape painting, from early on she sought alternative ways of looking at it.[6] "As students, we visited museums and copied paintings," she said, "but I struggled with the fact that everyone could interpret artworks differently. My suspicion was personal. There was no standard. Where was the master? I felt I was teaching myself, and already at a young age, I enjoyed thinking about who is the amateur and who is the master."[6]

In 2007, Wang left China for a residency in Germany, where Monika Baer encouraged her to enroll in postgraduate studies at Städelschule.[4][6] After graduating, Wang did a residency at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. She has lived in the Netherlands since 2012.[4]

Wang is a transgender woman.[7]

Work

Wang's art spans multiple disciplines including painting, performance, calligraphy and fashion, and has been described by Frieze as mapping "how language, custom and culture shape identity."[3] Her work has also been said to touch on "Dutchness and Germanness, pairing observations on immigration and belonging with reflections on other aspects crucial to our understanding of the self, such as our gender and class presentation or our sense of style."[4]

In addition, Wang's art is noted for drawing upon or referencing feminist authors, such with her 2024 diptych painting on silk Pulling Pushing Dragging that features a calligraphed extract from Octavia E. Butler's novel Patternmaster[1][8]

In 2025, Wang won the Wolfgang Hahn Prize.[2] As part of the award's related exhibit at the Museum Ludwig, Wang presented new works recreated by memory from the geometric paintings of Agnes Martin.[3] A year earlier at the 60th Venice Biennale,[9] Wang presented her new art series "Do Not Agree with Agnes Martin All the Time," which appropriated Martin's style while also "subverting motifs from classical Chinese painting."[3] ArtAsiaPacific described these works as "ironically melancholic and profoundly sincere," with Wang transposing "Martin's lifelong quest for beauty and serenity through mathematical precision onto commercially produced, rectangular canvases.[10]

Awards

References

  1. ^ a b Stern, Mia (28 January 2025). "The Violent Word Games of Evelyn Taocheng Wang". ArtReview. Retrieved 10 March 2026.
  2. ^ a b c Rabb, Maxwell (2 December 2024). "Evelyn Taocheng Wang receives the Wolfgang Hahn Prize 2025". Artsy. Retrieved 10 March 2026.
  3. ^ a b c d "Evelyn Taocheng Wang Doesn’t Play by Tradition" by Angel Lambo, Frieze Magazine, November 18, 2025.
  4. ^ a b c d e Archey, Karen (April 2021). "Openings: Evelyn Taocheng Wang". ArtForum.
  5. ^ Werf, Huib Haye van der (1 February 2018). "Evelyn Taocheng Wang". ArtForum. Retrieved 10 March 2026.
  6. ^ a b c Parkes, Isabel. "'Who is the master?' On Evelyn Taocheng Wang's process of observation, error, and transformation". Art Basel. Retrieved 15 March 2026.
  7. ^ "Save my baby first". Art Institute of Chicago. 2017. Retrieved 10 March 2026.
  8. ^ a b Foqué, Yana (24 April 2025). "Evelyn Taocheng Wang 'Spreading Elegance' at Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam". Mousse Magazine.
  9. ^ "Biennale Arte 2024 | Evelyn Taocheng Wang". La Biennale di Venezia. 12 March 2024. Retrieved 15 March 2026.
  10. ^ "Biography as Fiction in Evelyn Taocheng Wang's 'Reflection Paper'" by Hendrik Folkerts, ArtAsiaPacific July/August 2021, issue 124, page 48.
  11. ^ "Dorothea von Stetten-Kunstpreis 2016". Kunstmuseum Bonn (in German).
  12. ^ "Evelyn Taocheng Wang wint Dolf Henkes Prijs 2019". De Ateliers (in Dutch). 2 February 2019.
  13. ^ "Evelyn Taocheng Wang scoops ABN AMRO Art Award". ABN AMRO. 16 October 2019. Retrieved 15 March 2026.
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