YAN WEN CHANG

Yan Wen Chang (b. 1993) immigrated to Toronto, alone from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 2011 at the age of 17.

Chang graduated with a BFA in Drawing and Painting at OCAD University in 2015 and has most recently earned her MFA from the University of Guelph, 2022. She was Robert Fones’ studio and painting assistant for three years. Chang has exhibited work at A.D. NYC, New York and in Toronto at the plumb, Pushmi Pullyu, Susan Hobbs Gallery and General Hardware. Her paintings are included in the collections of the Toronto Dominion Bank, the Royal Bank of Canada and several noteworthy private collections.

Yan Wen Chang investigates and critiques the utopian idea of the American Dream. She refers to the American Dream as a concept that is not defined geographically by the U.S.A., but to one that describes the passion, obsession, desire and sacrifice to translocate to the West as a means of survival and/or a ‘better life’. Chang firmly believes that there is always a possibility in the face of nothing. This maxim informs her very existence and is the foundation of her artistic practice.

In her Star Paintings, Chang paints the same sized five-pointed star to conceal as much canvas as possible. Sometimes she chooses to conceal the entire surface completely with stars, and in others she allows light from the raw canvas itself or painted colours in the background to fight to the surface. In her Portrait of Self paintings, Chang reduces her self-portrait into a grin and a pair of slanted eyes accentuated with eyeliner which appear as reflections in the rear and side-view mirror of the car. She positions herself sitting in the front passenger seat, never the one driving or in control of the destination. In her gouache paintings, Chang depicts her lived experiences of translocation, especially her longing for her mother who still resides in Malaysia and a place to call home.

The five-pointed star, car and portrait of self are all subject matters in her paintings that abstract the iconic symbols of the traditional American Dream to express her images as a materialist impulse and a sensitivity to the pure haecceity of each subject. Chang’s paintings are about freedom, intuition, and courage. These qualities are embedded in her paintings by their very existence in their making as these qualities define who she is.