Wen Liu: Tame Tangle

January 9, 2025 to May 11, 2025 | Aldrich Projects

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is pleased to announce Wen Liu’s first solo museum presentation on the East coast, Tame Tangle. Liu’s presentation is the tenth installment of Aldrich Projects, a quarterly series featuring one work or a focused body of work by a single artist on the Museum’s campus. Tame Tangle will debut a series of new wall sculptures that explore themes of loss and belonging through material investigations that foreground the interplay between absence and presence. Wen Liu: Tame Tangle will be on view January 9 to May 11, 2025.

Born and raised in Shanghai, Wen Liu immigrated to the US in 2014 to pursue a career in the visual arts. Her practice examines the complexities of abandonment and acceptance, particularly in relation to her experience building a sense of security in a foreign environment. Deeply inspired by the natural world, Liu’s wall sculptures are created through a metaphorical multi-step mold-making process that she likens to the molting process, in which animals shed old or worn-out bodily elements to make way for renewal, repair, and growth.

Her compositions are inspired by an experimental calligraphy practice, where she folds still-wet paper in half to create symmetrical, inkblot-like images. These abstract “sketches” inform the sculpture’s design, bridging Eastern and Western modes of communication and interpretation. Her clay frameworks suggest organic and bodily forms such as vertebrae, pelvic bones, hip joints, braided hair, and sinuous tree roots—references symbolic of the temporal yet perpetual cycles of life.

The cavities between the skeletal structures are filled with resin and traditional Chinese herbal medicine, which Liu began integrating into her work after the loss of her father. Traditional herbal treatments are often formulated based on how effectively patients can communicate their symptoms and feelings. In this way, Liu draws a parallel between the frustration in the articulation of pain and the experience of speaking a second language, emphasizing how linguistic limitations can hinder connection and healing.

The presentation will be accompanied by a ‘zine.

Aldrich Projects: Wen Liu | Tame Tangle is curated by Curatorial and Publications Manager Caitlin Monachino.

Artist Bio

Wen Liu was born in Shanghai, China, and is based in Brooklyn, New York. She is a RAiR Foundation Grantee for 2022; DCASE Individual Artists Program Grantee for 2018, 2019 and 2020 and received the Illinois Arts Council Agency 2020 Artist Fellowship Award. She attended residencies at RAiR Foundation, MASS MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, ACRE and Hyde Park Art Center. Her work has been exhibited at Culture Center in Chicago, Lubeznik Center for the Arts in Michigan City, the National Grand Theater in Beijing, China and Roswell Museum in New Mexico.

Funders

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