Kirk Ke Wang
Featured Artist
www.kirkkewang.com
Sugar Bomb One of my favorite childhood memories is the joy of tasting Cuban brown sugar during the cold war time in China. One day, my Mom brought home a bag and said: “This will be our last time eating Cuban sugar, because of the U.S. trade embargo.” I was very disappointed. Who would predict that 40 some years later, I savored Cuban brown sugar again in Havana!
Before taking the trip to Cuba this year, I was “brainwashed” that people in Cuba are all defiant proletarian monsters, living in a depressed life, and they hate America and the bourgeoisies. How wrong I was. I found Cuban people are indeed poor yet seemly, dignified and happy. They like Americans and their materialistic stuff! I had the same wrong impressions when I first arrived in America 27 years ago. Through the propaganda of Mao’s era, I was told that America is a war thirsty, selfish and profit-driven society. Yet I met so many loving and compassionate individuals in my life here. FDR was right: the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. My Cuban trip inspired the concept of this installation: the love-hate relationship between opposite or different societies. Each side wants to benefit politically and culturally with persuasion, influence, and propaganda. During China’s cultural revolution, Western lifestyle was labeled as a “sugar coated bomb… But eventually the sugar bomb blasted the ascetic gate wide open! I sculpted many “bombs” made of Cuban brown sugar that I “smuggled” in, tobacco leaves, Trayvon Martin’s Skittle candies in Chinese containers, American-made “High Life” beer bottles, erotic icons, as well as materials of cultural identity. Those bombs shower down as we are attacked, with their red trajectory pointing at the school chairs flying into the wall. Via earphones connected to the chair, audience can secretly listen to revolutionary propaganda songs, while the pro-western romantic songs that I recorded at the park in Havana are playing… I hope the paradox and irony of “bombs” made of “sweets” would instigate a debate about our mental state of fear in today’s seemly dangerous world. What about things that appear lethal yet taste good? What about real threats disguised under the sweetness? Should we fear?
Kirk Ke Wang, Professor of Visual Arts of Eckerd College, is a painter, sculptor, photographer, mixed media artist, as well as an educational software developer. He was born in Shanghai, China. At age 16, he entered the Nanjing Normal University in China for his BFA and MFA studies. Wang started his teaching at the same university after graduation. In 1984, Wang won the bronze medal for the 6th National Exhibition of Fine Art one of the major national art competitions in China. As a result, he was granted the opportunity to study in the U.S. In 1986, Wang moved to Tampa, Florida as an exchange scholar at the University of South Florida. Later, he completed his second MFA from USF. After graduation, Wang was appointed as the art director of a design firm and designed many projects for Disney World, MGM Studio, Sea World, and Busch Gardens, etc. In early 1990s, Wang taught at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota. He joined Eckerd College in the fall of 1993. Wang maintains a studio in Tampa Florida, as well as in Shanghai and NYC.