Wang, Kelly

Kelly Wang’s work examines and redefines Asian-American identity and considers the reality of being a diasporic artist. Her visual and conceptual practice is rooted in personal experience, Chinese art history, and material experimentation. She earned an MA in Art History from Columbia University and a BA in Art History from CUNY Hunter College. Kelly has been experimenting with calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting practices and techniques since 2010 while developing her own artistic practice. She has lectured about Chinese art and Western abstract painting at CUNY Hunter College.

A multidisciplinary artist, Wang combines contemporary and pre-modern materials integrating collage, mixed media, painting, sculpture, found objects, and installation. Her work explores the tension between dimensions; hard, defined edges and soft organic forms; concrete physical environments and immaterial inherited realms. Wang's unconventional, pioneering techniques push the boundaries of what "ink art" can be. Five of her works were acquired by Princeton University Art Museum, where she had a solo exhibition entitled Between Heartlands: Kelly Wang at Princeton's gallery project space, Art@Bainbridge, in 2022. Since then, she has exhibited in several major exhibitions, including Summoning Memories: Art Beyond Chinese Traditions, Asia Society Texas, Houston, 2023; Shan Shui Reboot: Re-Envisioning Landscape for a Changing World, China Institute Gallery, New York, 2024; Metamorphosis: Chinese Imagination and Transformation, also at China Institute Gallery, New York, USA (until Jan 11, 2026).

Her work has also been collected by Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton; Asian Art Museum San Francisco, San Francisco; Washington & Lee University Art Museum, Lexington, USA.