Expertise
Interdisciplinary art, contemporary sculpture, contemporary Chinese calligraphy, conceptual art, research based art projects, community art.
Research Interests
Through inter-media experiments, I explore how identity crosses, merges, and transcends culture while asking how powerful forces such as migration, rejection, and assimilation affect cultural norms and the natural world.
Education
- MFA Visual Art (2019), Lesley University, College of Art and Design, Cambridge, MA
- MPH (1992), Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY
- BS, Concentration: Biochemistry and Food Science (1987), Tunghai University, Taiwan
Biosketch
Born and raised in Taiwan, Wen-hao has been residing along the banks of the Charles River, Massachusetts, since 1996. As an interdisciplinary artist, her career includes teaching, speaking, and community services. Wen-hao’s practice is rooted in her curiosity about self-expression and civic engagement in multicultural societies. Her academic preparations span the fields of biomedical sciences, public health, humanities, and visual art. Besides her studio practices, she is respected for her role in building interdisciplinary Asia Studies communities at Harvard University and Boston University. Her recent solo exhibitions Weed Out, Home on Our Backs, It Speaks for Itself, and I Love Your Grammatical Errors (forthcoming in April 2023) experiment on the interplay between art exhibitions, visual history, and public humanities. Wen-hao teaches at the Art and Design Department of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and at the Boston University Department of World Languages and Literatures.
As the 2020 Artist-in-Residence at Boston’s Pao Art Center, she produced a body of work during a pivotal time in Asian American civic movements on Boston Chinatown local history. Her work is exhibited frequently in the Northeast, presented at the Boston Sculptors Gallery where she is a member, and supported by the generosity of grants. Wen-hao’s project, Weed Out, is featured in a new book, Crossing Boundaries & Confounding Identity: Chinese Women in Literature, Art, and Film, SUNY Press, 2023.
Wen-hao can also be reached at 617-519-8990.
Selected Presentations
- One Day in Taipei: An Ever-Changing Cultural Landscape - Boston University Center for the Study of Asia, and BU Evergreen Program - 2022
- Laundry Rock: Histories of Laundries of Boston Chinatown - A Tunny F. Lee Memorial Lecture and a public program for Wen-hao Tien: Home on Our Backs. Chinese Historical Society of New England, Pao Arts Center, BUCSA, the Boston Foundation, Tufts Medical Center - March 13, 2021
- Weed Out - 2019 New England Graduate Media Symposium, Emerson College, Boston, MA - 2019