"Bountiful" is now exhibiting at Future Tenant until December 7th. Future Tenant has been presenting the "Bountiful" interview series since the opening of this group exhibition, today we present artist interviews with Ruby Wang, conducted by Visual Programming Manager Kate Lin.
Could you give us a brief introduction of who you are and how you became an artist?
Ruby: I am a Taiwanese Canadian, and I came to the States to pursue college education in the arts. My family members are separated across Asia and North America; thus, food becomes something that speaks of my cultural background and connects our relationship since having a family meal together is rare and is to be cherished. There is not a decisive moment in time where I realize, “I want to become an artist”; for what I can recall, I have always been involved with arts and crafts since youth, and have always known that my future path would involve this expression of the creative mind.
Please give us a short description of concept to your showing pieces.
Ruby: Last year this time, I was going through some personal experiences that reshaped how food can carry a meaning for me as a woman. Wine and Bananas, the painting series shown in the Bountiful exhibition, derives from a video installation project exploring food and pleasure, but also alcohol and sexual abuses in an intimate prospect.
How are the paintings different from the video installation project? What message did you want to address to the audience who view the paintings for the first time without seeing the prior video project?
Ruby: The video installation project is named “One Week and A Day” to signify the period of time of gradual personal conflict, yet the paintings focus less on the chronology of event but the beauty of these food and objects. For these Wine and Bananas paintings, the central emphasis is on these two unconventional food pair, which has unconcealed association to bodily fluids and sexual organs. The pieces aim to purely provoke viewers’ visual senses with the erotic nature of these simplistic yet sensual objects.
What is your creative process? How long does it usually take you to complete a project/artwork?
Ruby: The creative process varies for each project, but recently I have adopted the method of using digital media (usually photography or video) to compose my concepts. Digital photography is just an efficient way for me to plan the picture, but while taking these pictures, I am simultaneously considering how I can build on top of these images physically with paint and other medium. From concept planning, prop prepping, photo shooting, editing, printing, to physically altering and adding final touches to the projects, it usually takes a little bit more than a month to complete one series. Often I will work on other photography shoots and projects at the same time to get new ideas flowing.
How does food in general relate to you on a personal level (and your art)?
Ruby: Food connects with me in a very personal level. If one asks me what I am pondering about, 95% of the time it will be about food. Food is both need and desire. Theorists like Brillat-Severin and Roland Barthes have written about eating, suggesting that this irrational human behavior to consume after you are full has erotic implications, for our needs have already been satisfied and what is left is lust. My art deals with this lust. It is something that occupies almost all my personal and artistic life. For me, food is both a pleasure and a struggle.
Do you admire any other artists?
Ruby: As a child, I had an affinity for realist painters, especially Rosa Bonheur, but my admiration lay beyond their artistic abilities. As shallow as it may sound, my adoration for Bonheur was probably due to the simple fact that she is a female artist, and her works outshined those of the other artists in this Impressionism exhibition I once visited. As the theme of food and the female body has gotten more relevant to my artist practices, I look at artists who have dealt with the subject of edibles, like Marilyn Minter, Lee Price, Will Cotton, Claes Oldenburg, Wayne Thiebaud, and those who discusses the women body with food, such as Cecelia Dahl, Julia Fullerton-Batten, Judy Chicago, Karen Finley, and Janine Antoni.
Are you working on any new projects at the moment? And where can we follow your work? (Blog, website, twitter, Facebook,etc)
Ruby: I am working on new photography and painting series that concern the female figure and sensuous food such as yogurt, jam, cream, and berries. These new projects can be seen on my website.
How did you know about Future Tenant?
Ruby: I have come to know about Future Tenant through the Carnegie Mellon connection, for a lot of graduate and undergraduate students have had exhibitions in the space. Thus it was such an honorable surprise when I was asked to participate in this group exhibition.