Pause: Evelyn Taocheng Wang
What is he afraid of?

The work of Evelyn Taocheng Wang (born 1981 in Chengdu, CN) emerges from an interest in what constitutes identity and how one’s own body is culturally relative to—and intertwined with—autobiographical structures. For KW Institute for Contemporary Art’s series Pause, Wang will present a completely new body of work, consisting of two films and an installation of large-scale fabrics. Pause is envisioned as a platform to punctuate the program by presenting a singular installation for a short period of time in order to bridge relationships between the past, present and future.

The new work is a result of Wang’s reflection on differing versions of mythologies that derive from various origins and have been written, altered, edited, and retold over time in different cultural contexts, with a particular focus on the fairy tale of The Princess and the Frog. Across all of these contexts, the tale is closely related to questions of transformation and the idea that identity is fluid and adaptable.

Taking the notion of the fictionalization of characters as well as an actual architectural site, the exhibition becomes a space where narratives are translated into a spatial structure within KW’s main hall. The institution’s premises symbolize both the architecture of the body and its structure in the process of transformation.

Curators: Maurin Dietrich, Cathrin Mayer

Exhibition folder (PDF)

Part of project: Pause series

The Pause series of KW Institute for Contemporary Art allowed for an ephemeral yet deep engagement with a single artwork in order to draw and question relationships between the past, present, and future. A Pause acted as a punctuation of KW’s regular program by presenting an artwork for a short period of time in between exhibition cycles, working with this state of in-between. Pause projects were predominantly commissioned or reworked pieces that shifted between or even merged the disciplines of performance, installation, video, and sonic work.

Overview
2017–2024

Pause: Billy Bultheel & James Richards
Workers in Song
7–9 June 24

Pause: The Noa Eshkol Chamber Dance Group
25/27 August 23

Pause: Alexis Blake
Crack Nerve Boogie Swerve
27–29 January 23

Pause: Lydia Ourahmane
sync
1–2 October 22

Pause: Tobias Spichtig
Die Matratzen
19–23 January 22

Pause: Michele Rizzo
REACHING
1–3 October 21

Pause: Archivio Conz Collection
Broken Sounds / Remote Music—Prepared Pianos
16–19 January 20

Pause: Every Ocean Hughes
Help the Dead
24–25 August 19

Pause: Emma Hedditch
+49 30 243459-53
18–19 May 19

Pause: Jimmy Robert (After Ian White)
Joie noire
19–20 January 19

Pause: AA Bronson
Garten der Lüste
26–29 April 18

Pause: Ericka Beckman
Super-8 Trilogy
18–21 January 18

Pause: Margaret Honda
Spectrum Reverse Spectrum
18–20 August 17

Pause: Anthony McCall
Line Describing a Cone
27–30 April 17