EFA STUDIO PROGRAM: Member Artists
Yu-Wen Wu
Yu-Wen Wu is an interdisciplinary artist. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Wu’s subjectivity as an immigrant is central to her artwork, creating an intersection of personal narrative and global discourse. Arriving at an early age, her experiences have shaped her work around migration—examining issues of displacement, assimilation, and the formation of identity in a new country. At the intersection of art, science, social and cultural issues, and the natural world, her wide-ranging projects include large-scale drawings, site-specific video installations, community-engaged practices, and public art.
Some of Wu’s recent exhibitions include presentations at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.; Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece; Xippas Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland; Tufts University Art Galleries, Medford, MA; Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College, NY; Nielsen Library, Smith College, Northampton, MA; SITE Santa Fe, NM; Perlman Teaching Museum at Carleton College, Northfield, MN; Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN; ICA Maine, Portland, ME; Rosecliff Mansion, Newport, RI; Center for Border Studies, Cúcuta, Colombia; and Praise Shadows Art Gallery, Brookline, MA.
Wu is committed to creating participatory, community-based projects, most notably the durational work Leavings/Belongings, with iterative installations in Maine, Massachusetts, Minneapolis, and Santa Fe. Other large-scale works include Lantern Stories (2020–22), an outdoor public artwork commissioned by the Greenway Conservancy for Chin Park in Boston’s Chinatown, along with a related project in San Francisco’s Chinatown (2022); We Belong (2022), a traveling light-based public artwork supported by Now + There and a City of Boston Transformative Public Art grant; The Poetry of Reason (2022), a wall sculpture at Tufts University Cummings Center; and Terrain (2016), a sculptural wall drawing for the Chao Center at Harvard Business School.
Wu has received numerous awards, including the inaugural Prilla Smith Brackett Award (Davis Museum, Wellesley, MA), a national grant from the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Brother Thomas Fellowship. She was awarded the 2023 James and Audrey Foster Prize, accompanied by a solo exhibition at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. She was also a 2024 Artist-in-Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and a 2024 Stepping Stone Grantee for the Trellis Art Fund. Her work is included in several private and public collections.
