Yu-Ching Wang: If I could stand in the sky...

Chinese American Arts Council/Gallery 456 is pleased to present Yu-Ching Wang’s solo exhibition: If I could stand in the sky..., on view from August 8, 2025, through August 22, 2025.

Exhibition Statement

"If I could stand in the sky, would I have more freedom?" This naïve question stems from Wang's experience as an outsider, feeling constrained, restricted, and caught in an ambiguous, disorienting sense of identity. Through this question, she challenges the geographic borders and societal norms imposed by humans and think of the relationship between these invisible boundaries and the concept of freedom and belonging.

By engaging in absurd actions to escape human-imposed rules, she reflects on the struggles and helplessness of survival in a foreign environment. This also leads her to explore how these intangible borders shape one’s "identity." In today’s turbulent global landscape, some people are forced to relocate, while others move by choice. But as human beings, do we truly have the freedom to choose where we belong?

The desire to exist anywhere on Earth seems natural. However, humans have divided the planet, drawn borders, established nations, and created social systems, seemingly to secure limited resources and protect freedom. Yet, at the same time, do these systems also restrict freedom? These curious, invisible "boundaries" not only shape our identities but also determine our access to mobility, resources, and rights. We wage wars and divide resources based on these distinctions, and the identities formed by these borders automatically categorize people into different hierarchies, limiting their freedom of movement.

Due to geopolitical conflicts and competing interests, Wang’s birthplace, Taiwan, is frequently erased from maps, an artificial human thing, rendering it, in some sense, an "invisible" country. Humanity not only divides physical space but also attempts to erase it from existence in their geopolitical games. As a Taiwanese person living abroad, she often faces questions about whether her country truly exists. In these moments, she feels as if she, too, has been erased from the world.

“As a resident of Earth, I am seemingly bound to follow these rules of the game. Yet, ironically, under the U.S. tax system, I am classified as an ‘alien*.’ This makes me wonder—if I could stand in the sky, would I be free from the constraints of human rules?”

If I could stand in the sky... is a multidisciplinary work that integrates performative action, photography, and spatial installation. As both artist and performer, she lays on the streets and lift her legs, creating an illusion from her perspective that she is successfully standing in the sky. Each fleeting moment is documented through photography, with each set consisting of two images: one showing her feet "standing" in the sky and the other capturing the absurdity of the act from an observer’s perspective. This juxtaposition highlights the contrast between the lightness of imagination and the weight of reality.

The installation is interactive, incorporating photographs and site-specific text interventions. Using pencils and chalk, she inscribes questions onto the exhibition space, prompting the audience’s engagement. As viewers interact with the space, the words gradually fade, mirroring the ease with which one's presence can be erased in a foreign land, leaving no trace behind.

The performative actions take place in various locations across New York City and its surrounding areas, chosen for their personal significance to Wang and their alignment with her impressions and imagination of the city. The textual elements in the installation serve as inquiries, prompts, and connections between personal memories and locations. Through her body, actions, and a fusion of past experiences and imagination, she attempts to map her own existence.

* "An alien is any individual who is not a U.S. citizen or U.S. national." — Definition

from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The term "alien" also means “extraterrestrial."

About the Artist

Yu‑Ching Wang (b. 1996, Taipei, Taiwan) is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York, working across spatial installation, video, performance, and photography. Her practice explores themes of identity, adaptation, and cultural memory, responding to urban environments and social structures.

Wang holds an MFA from Pratt Institute (2022), an MFA from Tainan National University of the Arts (2021), and a BFA from Taipei National University of the Arts (2018). Her work has been exhibited internationally, including a solo exhibition at ART TAIPEI 2023 where she received the Made in Taiwan – Young Artist Themed Exhibition Award and a solo presentation at the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei in 2022. Her performance piece Breathing in New York was featured in Art in Odd Places 2022: STORY and later collected by the Art Bank Taiwan in 2024.

In 2025, she was awarded the International Cultural Exchange Grant from the National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) in Taiwan. Her video works have been presented at the Korean Cultural Center in Washington, D.C., and she has been recognized with the Pratt Institute Merit Scholarship (2019–2022), and the Outstanding Art Prize (2017) from Taipei National University of the Arts.

Opening Reception: August 8, 2025, 6-8pm

Please contact info@caacarts.org for more information.

Gallery 456

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Address: 456 Broadway, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10013, Elevator Accessible Contact: (212) 431-9740 | info@caacarts.org

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Chinese American Arts Council's Gallery 456 Visual Arts Exhibition Series is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Gove­­­rnor and the New York State Legislature.