Website: https://angelawei.cargo.site/
My practice explores the visual codes across different genres through an imaginative approach to image making. The large scale of my works are meant to create an immersive, enveloping experience. At the heart of my practice is storytelling, of both individual, and universal experiences. Each narrative depicted is a portal to a hallucinatory world of its own internal logic, dimensions, and time flow that is simultaneously otherworldly yet rooted in my own identity. In particular, I draw upon esthetic techniques inspired by Chinese scroll paintings, Japanese pop art, and Renaissance technical precision. The mixture of influences is a reflection of my hybrid identity, growing up Chinese Canadian. While I struggled to reconcile my Eastern background with my Western upbringing, my paintings offer a solution against that rigid binary by uniting disparate visual codes of both cultures; for instance, figures may possess gestural similarities to Roman goddesses yet are rendered in vibrant and flat colors that are reminiscent of Japanese woodblock prints. Each piece explores the tension between the real and the imaginary, by either subverting our expectations of conventional narratives or inserting insidious messages into unexpected moments. My works explore topics such as the loss of identity in a divisive world, temptation, greed, and the sinister effects of technological abuse. Like children’s fables such as Grimms’ fairy tales, disruptive messages are concealed within seemingly innocuous imagery. Cuteness is ultimately a type of defense mechanism against these realities that would be difficult to digest had they been represented literally.