Live, Dwell, Stay
Siru Wen

GALLERY II & III

Siru Wen, Live, Dwell, Stay, 2021, multi-channel video installation, video still.

November 19 - December 18, 2022

Opening reception: Saturday, November 19 from 6–8pm

A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce Live, Dwell, Stay, a multi-channel video installation by artist Siru Wen. The work discloses the uncanny yet mundane activities that occur under the roof of an old Chinese couple. This is Wen’s first solo exhibition in New York City.

Live, Dwell, Stay draws on Wen’s early memories of her grandparents and the house where they ambled quietly and dwelled in stillness, joining each other on occasion, while spending most of their time in separation. Daily routines and moments of silence, isolation, and dependency are cut through with erratic and repeated acts of violence.

In creating this work, Wen investigates the ways that emotional bodies and the architecture that holds them act, and react, to one another—exploring how bodies occupy, navigate, linger in, and escape through space, as well as how spaces alienate, mediate, aggravate, weigh on, and console the bodies.

This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.

Siru Wen is a Chinese-born artist based in Los Angeles whose practice intersects between installation, film, and photography. In her work, she meditates on the balance of opposing forces, meanings, and sentiments that originate from and flow between the bodies/interior and nature/exterior.

Wen has shown her work at Sheffield DocFest, United Kingdom; 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica; Aesthetica Art Prize, York, United Kingdom; The Center For Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins; B3 Biennial of the Moving Image, Frankfurt, Germany; and Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles. She participated in Artists-in-Residence programs at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, 18th Street Arts Center, and MASS MoCA. Wen received her MFA in Film at the University of California, Los Angeles.

View the Press Release here.

Photography: Sebastian Bach