B. GUANGZHOU, CHINA , 1999; LIVES IN CHICAGO, IL
Iris Wu was born and raised in Guangzhou, China. At the age of eighteen, having never before visited the United States, she moved to Williamsburg, Virginia, to attend the College of William and Mary. Although she initially intended to study mathematics, Wu signed up freshman year for a sculpture course—her first art class. She switched her major to studio art and abruptly declared her intention to become an artist. Wu then began to produce sophisticated photography that was both intimate and autobiographical.
Wu’s early student work is marked by a precocious examination of personal themes including queer intimacy, oscillating between loss and discovery. In “Echo Fragments,” an ongoing project initiated in the first few months of the pandemic, Wu reflects on her romantic relationship with a former partner through frank self-exploration. “These are sentimental and seductive images from our relationship, mixed with photographs that grapple with our shared confrontation with uncertainty, wandering, searching and longing,” she observes. Her images are suffused with stillness, solitude, desire, absence, and intimacy, captured in moments of ambiguous transition and possibility.
This installation is part of the exhibition Parallel Lives: Photography, Identity, and Belonging, curated by Maya Benton. Parallel Lives draws attention to complex notions of community and belonging, and in particular how our social and familial relationships have been reimagined as a result of the conditions of isolation and uncertainty imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Photo: Iris Wu, Untitled (fruits), 2020