Amy Wong
Arts & Expression, East Asian, Visual Art
Born in 1981 in Toronto, Amy is a painter of Cantonese-Chinese descent.
Wong also creates collaborative work in various mediums with the Canadian art collective, the YPF (Young People's Foundation) of which she is a founding member.
She was an artist in residence at the Chinese European Art Center in Xiamen, China, from October 2007 to April 2008 and spent two years as an artist in residence at De Ateliers in Amsterdam, the Netherlands from 2005-2006. She was the first Canadian to be invited since the 1970s and only one of four Canadians in the history of the program.
She received her bachelor's of Fine Arts degree, with distinction, from Montréal's Concordia University in 2004.
Her recent major art activities include:
Selected Solo Exhibitions:
2008 | Everything is Everything
Ace Art Inc. Winnipeg, Canada (September-November)
2008 | Work on Wonder Chinese European Art Center. Xiamen, China
(March)
2007 | Amy Wong, Paintings Galerie Van Wijngaarden Hakkens. Amsterdam,
Netherlands (September)
2006 | Have A Heart (with karaoke installation co-organized with
Marlene Dumas), De Ateliers. Amsterdam, Netherlands (December)
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2009 | Canada and the World: Asian Imaginings, Toronto (May-June)
2009 | Energy at Lennox Contemporary (Winter Branches), Toronto
(February)
2008| World Open Art Festival Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South
Korea (October)
2006 | Koninklijke Prijs voor Vrije Schilderkunst (The Royal Queens
Prize for Painting) Gementemuseum, Den Haag, Netherlands (October-December)
2006 | Rodney Graham Band (with the YPF) Centre Fractal in collaboration
with Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal, Montréal
(October)
Amy is the recipient of the 2008 Toronto Arts Council, Emerging Artist's Grant from the Toronto Arts Council for 2008 and a 2007 Travel Grant for Visual Artists from the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2006, she was shortlisted for the Koninklijke Prijs voor Vrije Schilderkunst (The Royal Queens Prize for Painting) in The Hague, Netherlands.
Her work also appears in the following publications:
2009 | DaSilva, Allison. Everything
is Everything. Winnipeg: Critical Distance/Paperwait (forthcoming).
2008 | Brynjolson, Noni. "West of East: The Canadian Diaspora."
The Uniter (October 9)
Winnipeg.
2008 | Lin Xiao-Yun, Lin Yen and Shi Xi-Sheng. "Work on Wonder
Exhibition at CEAC". Xiamen Evening News (March 7) Xiamen,
China.
2006 | Koninklijke Prijs voor Vrije Schilderkunst Catalogue. Den
Haag, Netherlands
amyw.h.wong@gmail.com | http://amywongwebsite.blogspot.com, http://www.annahakkens.com | http://de-ateliers.nl
Quote from Amy Wong
My paintings and drawings are investigations into plurality, romanticism, and a personal politic in an attempt to understand myself and the world around me. Growing up between two cultures (with many others floating around) in an idiosyncratic way has formed how I consider the markers of culture/identity, and how people understand each other with such codes. This vantage point comes from my special position as an Asian Canadian, and it is the foundation upon which all my perspectives are built, consciously or unconsciously. I therefore approach logic within shades of grey rather than in black and white, and looks for truthfulness in contradiction, employing an open attitude to play with convention. By looking at different angles simultaneously, I attempt to extract something meaningful from the ether of history, pop and garbage that we live in globally.
Photographer: Erica van Loon