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 as well as hard, defined edges and soft organic forms. 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", in 2022. She has exhibited at the Asia Society Houston in 2023 and China Institute NY in 2024 and 2025. In February 2026, Kelly will have a solo exhibition entitled “Impressed” at the University of Minnesota. Her work has also been collected by Harvard Art Museums, the Asian Art Museum San Francisco, Nelson Atkins Museum, Smith College Museum of Art, and Washington & Lee University Art Museum.
Wang's works were published in Arts of Asia (Summer 2023 edition), Princeton's Art & Archaeology Newsletter (Fall 2018 edition), and in the New York Times coverage of the 2025 exhibition at China Institute, in which she was also quoted.
BIOGRAPHY
1992 Born in New York, USA, granddaughter of the distinguished collector Wang Nanping (1924–1985)
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023
2022
2021
2020
2018
2017
2016
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025-2026
2025
2024
2019-2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
