HOLIDAY selfie

Welcome to my Grad Show page. My name is Rebecca Wang, or 王晨釔 in Chinese. 

My practice has been focused on introspection of my life style and consumption patterns through staged photography and provisional installations within domestic spaces for the last year of my undergraduate study as a response to the current time. Exhibited below is my most recent work HOLIDAY selfie.

Artist Statement

Dealing with the relationship between the cultural and the personal and the idea of lifestyle politics, photography series HOLIDAY selfie portrays personal and fictional narratives that question the excessive and compulsory material expression around the overly-commercialized holidays across the globe. Due to travel restrictions during the last holiday season, my plan to go back to China to be with my family was interrupted. The long hours spent in my compact condominium unit in Vancouver have prompted me to reflect on the role of celebration in contemporary social life. By photographing myself in constructed scenes in my living spaces along with objects or setups associated with cultural celebrations during holidays, I want to evoke a dissonance around the often cherished and anticipated occasions.

The state of ambivalence expressed in the series comes from both the sense of longing of connection and familiarity on top of the anxiety caused by the collective holiday profligacy; and the inability of affording a social life and the resulting isolation due to the lack of alternative ways of engaging with communities. Created under the uneasiness of living through a pandemic, and witnessing (also involuntarily participating) the continued exploitation of the planet, HOLIDAY selfie serves as a critique of the often universalized and commercialized contemporary manifestations of cultural and social traditions that deviate from their origins and their potential to further marginalize those who don’t or aren’t able to share the same sentiment around social gatherings or celebrations.