Wang Tuo (b. 1984, Changchun, China) interweaves Chinese modern history, cultural archives, fiction and mythology into speculative narratives. Equating his practice to novel writing, he stages an intervention in historical literary texts and cultural archives to formulate stories that blur the boundaries of time and space, facts and imagination. His work spans across film, performative elements, painting and drawing. The multidimensional chronologies he constructs, interspersed with conspicuous and hidden clues, expose the underlying historical and cultural forces at work within society. Embracing a uniquely Chinese hauntology, Wang proposes “pan-shamanization” as an entry point to unravel the suppressed and untreated memories of 20th century China. Through historical inquiry, Wang’s works, often unsettling and dramatic, disentangle collective unconsciousness and historical traumas. His more recent work critiques contemporary conditions of censorship, more specifically the tensions within the push and pull between artist and authority.
Wang’s recent solo exhibition “Wang Tuo: The Second Interrogation” was presented in Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong in 2023. His other solo exhibitions were held at Basel (Switzerland, 2022), UCCA (Beijing, 2021), Present Company (New York, 2019), Salt Project (Beijing, 2017), and Taikang Space (Beijing, 2016). Wang also participated in group exhibitions at KADIST (San Francisco, 2022), He Art Museum (Guangdong, 2022), Song Art Museum (Beijing, 2022), Incheon Art Museum (Incheon, 2021), National Museum of Singapore (Singapore, 2021), OCAT Institute (Beijing, 2021), Power Station of Art (Shanghai, 2021), Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art (Shanghai, 2021), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul, 2020), Aranya Art Center (Beidaihe, 2020), Serpentine Gallery (London, 2020), Today Art Museum (Beijing, 2019), Long March Space (Beijing, 2019), Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (Baden-Baden, 2019), Julia Stoschek Collection (Düsseldorf, 2018), Zarya Center for Contemporary Art (Vladivostok, 2018), and Queens Museum (New York, 2017).
Wang was selected for the OCAT x KADIST Emerging Media Artist Residency Program in 2020 and was artist-in-residence at Queens Museum in New York from 2015 to 2017. Furthermore, he was awarded the 10th Three Shadows Photography Award in 2018.
Wang currently lives and works in Beijing, China
