Ying-Yueh Chuang

North Vancouver Community Arts Council presents:

Ying-Yueh Chuang

January 20 – March 16, 2015

Artist Talk: Monday, January 26, 12:15 - 12:45pm

Please join Ying-Yueh as she discusses the inspiration and process behind her work.

Ying-Yueh is originally from Taiwan and has lived in Canada since 1990. Her work has a strong focus on hybridized materials influenced by her hybrid existence living between two cultures.

The Flower Series focuses on bridging two major craft media, clay and textile. This body of work was inspired by visits to fabric stores in the traditional market during a four-month residency in 2011 in Jingdezhen, China. She selected fabric patterned with two-dimensional flowers, and replaced them with three-dimensional porcelain flowers of her own creation. Ying-Yueh juxtaposed the two materials to address social issues such as equality. Before Mao, Imperial porcelain representing the social elites was used only for royalty. Conversely, the affordable and decorative fabric associated with the poor was used for household or ordinary dress purposes. These works contrast cheap labour and mass-produced fabric for the lower classes with expensive, hand-built porcelain for the upper classes.

She has integrated the use of + (crosses), multiplied to create a grid system. The repeated pattern in the fabric is used as placement of the ceramic elements, to symbolize where Paradise exists. In an ideal society, everyone contributes his or her talent equally to the wholeness, and that is where Paradise exists.

Ying-Yueh received a diploma from Langara College in 1997 and a BFA from Emily Carr Institute in 1999. She received her MFA in Ceramics from NSCAD University in 2001. She has received numerous awards and Provincial and Canada Council Grants. Her work is included in numerous public collections such as the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Government of Ontario Art Collection, Mackenzie Art Gallery, the Burlington Art Centre Permanent Collection, and the WOCEK Icheon World Ceramic Centre in Korea, and it has been featured in Art in America, Ceramics Monthly, Ceramic Review and Ceramics Art & Perception.

yingyuehchuang.com