2022 Arts Award: Yifan Wang

by Sindey Amar ‘24

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Yifan Wang ‘22

Major: Art History (Museum Studies Track)

Minor: Finance

Aside from being a BC creative, who are you? Tell us about yourself!

I’m Yifan! I’m a Senior majoring in Art History with a Museum Studies concentration and minoring in Finance. I’m from Beijing, China, and I came to the States when I was 15. Since then, I’ve been here, in the New England area. I love cooking. I love traveling and photography. I really enjoy life in general. My personal life is a lot of watching movies, going out, museum hopping, and visiting galleries. I was abroad last year; I went to Paris, so now I’ve traveled to 16 countries and lived in 3, which is very awesome. Especially during COVID, it was amazing that I was able to go there and travel within Europe a little bit to study and live in Paris for four months. 

Yifan’s favorite meal of 2022: 

Recently, I’m obsessed with doing a mushroom risotto I learned from my host family in Paris. Almost everyone likes it. It’s also very simple, except you have to stir the rice for almost 40 minutes, but it's a good entree and pairs very well with a glass of white wine which is also something I’m passionate about: wine.

How have you connected with the Arts Community at BC?

Mostly, I’m involved with the Arts Council on campus. I’m the Visual Arts Coordinator, so that means I will be organizing and coordinating all the visual arts related events on campus. That includes Gallery 203 and the Arts Walk in Arts Fest, and that's the main two big things I work on. For Gallery 203, we accept proposals from everyone in the BC community, and I help curate the show in the gallery. For the Arts Walk, it’ll be more than visual arts: videos, literary work, and now some computer science and a combination between that and art—an interactive sculpture in the new Arts Walk. We also are doing a Podcast accompanying the visual element of the Arts Walks so that people can listen to the audio while they are walking through the space and get the behind-the-scenes story from the artist and hear their voice. 

Is there a project that you’ve done on campus with the Arts Community that has been particularly meaningful or impactful to you?

It would definitely be the Arts Walk. We started this event last year, and it was the second year into COVID. I joined the office in 2019, and we didn't have a physical in-person Arts Fest in 2020. 2021 is the first in-person Arts Festival I’ve been involved in and worked on, and including this new Arts Walk—I think—is better. We have art going from Lower, Middle, and all the way to Upper campus, so it really knits the entire community together to give artists on campus better exposure and more involvement in the daily life of BC students. When you walk past, you’ll see all this artwork, and I think that’s really crucial and important for me and the Arts Community in general on campus. As we know, art doesn't receive as much attention as athletics or the STEM department. I think this is a very good way to bring [the arts] outside of Devlin where the Arts Department is and show that art is not limited to art majors. Many artists are Computer Science or CSOM, and it really shows the students in general how diverse we are as a student group. I think that is very meaningful for me. Art has the power to communicate across multiple barriers: cultural barriers, linguistic barriers, even generational barriers. I think art brings people together without a boundary because you see it, you get the message immediately, it evokes a sense of community and collective emotions together. I think that is very meaningful to me.

Note from the Editor: The 2022 Arts Walk was a huge success, and Yifan brought a breath of new life to the 2022 Arts Festival with her hard work.

As winner of the Jeffrey Howe Art History Award, would you share your experience with Art History? 

Fountain, Marcel Duchamp, 1917.

My passion for Art History started in 7th or 8th grade. It was out of nowhere that we got a new Art teacher in middle school, and I was still in Beijing by then. [The new teacher] graduated from an art university, and he was randomly teaching us Art History in class, which is very uncommon for middle school art classes where usually you got a piece of paper and did whatever—paint, draw. He started drawing on the blackboard and explaining the history of art and telling us where it came from, from the Totem poles by Native Americans to Egyptian and all the way to Greek art. That's my first contact with Art History, and since then I've been amazed by the way you can look at the world from art. Technically speaking, human beings are probably the only species on this planet that produces art, so looking at the history of art is a way of looking at human civilization and how it develops. You see different aspects of history and how social contexts and scientific inventions influence art and artists. That's how I started being very interested in Art History. In high school I took AP Art History and came in as an Art History major to BC and just stayed there, adding a Museum Studies concentration where we learn more about how museums function and the history of museums in general, the institution, and learn about conservations too, the chemistry behind it a little. 

I've been taking classes very vastly and just fulfilling the requirements, but something came. I remember early in freshman year, I was more interested in periods like Renaissance, Italian Renaissance basically, and I’d been passionate about Egyptian art as a child, but my interests have shifted to Contemporary and Modern art, especially art after Impressionism: firm expressionism until nowadays. I found [these styles] very interesting and philosophical in a way. If you think about Duchamp, if you think about his work, Rene Magritte, they are more about the ideology behind the art rather than the technique. It is interesting to think about that and think about the world from a more abstract and philosophical aspect. 

I also took this class with Professor Campbell in Modern Contemporary Chinese art which was very interesting. We mainly talked about 20th century art in China and for me it was a way of understanding my own history. You don't get to learn a lot about 20th century history in China because it is very controversial and a lot happened during that time that is hard to talk about and teach in class. Here, looking from the art history perspective, you see what the impact was on people's lives, especially on artists from the artwork they produced. For me, Art History is a way for me to learn and understand the world, and how to understand us as human beings. 

On Kawara, the Today series, 1966-2014. Exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, NYC.

Are there any art historical projects you have worked on or are planning to work on in the future?

Yes, I did a paper with professor Lottery on Time in general. It was junior year, but it wasn't a thesis, it was a term paper from several artistic perspectives. One was on On Kawara, and his work is interesting. He would paint the time of the time, so he would paint the time of day he was painting during—for example he would paint June 20th—, but he had to paint it within that day, and if he didn't finish it, he would just throw it away. He had been sending postcards to himself whenever he traveled, just "I was there, this is the time, this is the place I was", so he tackled the perception of time and existence in space and in time of oneself. Also, I think Kabakov. He is a Russian artist and together with his partner, the couple created installation work, so they would create anti-museum space. They created an interior just like a museum you would imagine: with a sofa in the center, this classic venetian red wall. They would have spotlights shine onto the wall as if there was artwork, but there was no artwork there, as if you just walked into the space in the aftermath of something. And, they would set up cleaning tools or there would be water dripping from the ceiling into a bucket and you would hear the sound, and you would see plastic wrap around chairs, so there was a different take on time. The minute you walk into that space, time starts and you can only imagine what happened before, and you'll never experience it. I was discussing the embodiment of time of the audience, so it's very interesting work, and I'm still very interested in the perception of time and the idea of time and its relationship with human beings in general, and in Art History, and in how artists tackle this mystery of time because time is an invention of human beings. It is a weird concept for me. If you think about it, it doesn't exist in the natural world; it is a human invention, and it is so crucial to us on a daily basis. We rely on the mark of time heavily on a daily basis. I might continue working on this project both on an academic and personal level. I'm really intrigued by the idea. 

The Empty Museum, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, 2004.

This year, you were nominated by Professor Kevin Lotery. Do you see him as a mentor for you? How has mentorship influenced your journey so far? 

I would definitely consider [Prof. Lotery] as a mentor. I took his junior year class on Contemporary Art, and it was the first contemporary art class I have ever taken. It's more of a turning point for me to open up a new world and learn more about art in general and the ideology behind contemporary art. In the past, I thought Contemporary Art was so abstract, so random, very hard to understand, but after taking his class, I said "Oh, this is how you should perceive contemporary art and how you should understand it, and this is how human beings' perception of the world has evolved." [Contemporary Art] is crucial for us living nowadays. I don't even know if we're in the postmodern world, and for me [contemporary art] lets me understand how we came to the place we are right now. I'm still taking a class with him, "Methodology", this year, and in this class, we learn of the technical aspects of being an art historian and the different methodologies art history has taken on. Do we perceive Art History from a social art history perspective, or a structural art history perspective, or a post-structuralism perspective? It really helps me understand that there's so many [possible ways] to tear into Art History and tear this gigantic project apart and really understand how it is composed. I would definitely consider him as a mentor. We have so many inspiring conversations that really open my mind in understanding Art History and the world in general. I really appreciate all the time we spend together in class and outside of class and the conversations. 

What are your plans for after graduation?

Post–graduation, I don't plan on going into academia in the field of Art History, but I think art history will be a very important part of my life in general. I think all the methods and the ways of learning and the ways of seeing that I have learned from my education and art history will definitely help me in the future in my professional life and career, even though it is not related to Art or Art History in general. I'll be working for at least 6 months in an internship at a VC [Venture Capital] Firm, and a big part of the job will be organizing and analyzing past investments. I think analyzing and coming up with the crucial reasons behind things or that key component was a big part of my education in art history, and I think the way of thinking and analyzing [in VC] will be the same, it just will be different subject matter. I think art really helps me learn how to communicate and understand people. At a VC Fund, especially with VC deals, people are more important than the money behind it, so I think my humanities background and my minor in Finance definitely will help me in my future career path.

What does this year’s Arts Festival theme New Nostalgia mean to you? Thinking about what you've said, how has your artistic expression evolved since coming to BC? 

New Nostalgia for me as a senior will mean leaving BC. I just began to realize that I have only 5 weeks left on this campus, and I really appreciate every moment that I’ve spent with the people here on campus. That's probably New Nostalgia when I think about it. It's all the memories and time and moments that I've spent here on this campus. I've learned so much and I've grown so much as an individual, becoming more independent and certain about myself. 

For artistic [expression], the shift from Ancient to Contemporary and Modern Art [is] also a shift in the way I think and the way I look at the world. It's more open minded because in Contemporary Art there isn't as much certainty as in Egyptian or Renaissance Art, especially if you think about Northern Renaissance Art: different flowers have different theologies, and if you understand all the symbols, you can read the paintings, whereas in Modern and Contemporary Art, it is all opened up and open for different interpretations as individuals see it. That definitely gave me a new perception of the world. [We] perceive the world nowadays with so much uncertainty that our generation is dealing with. Learning Art and Art History and this shift in interest helped me prepare and face this uncertain world, but also opened it up to changes and unexpected things. 

Do you have any parting words of wisdom for Boston College students?

Be grateful: how grateful I am to BC and the Art History department and the Arts Council office. I am very grateful for other opportunities I have had, and that I get to express myself in different ways. As a senior, I am very grateful for the four years I've spent here and for the Arts Council the three years I've spent [with them]. I've grown so much and learned so many things not only from an Art History Perspective but also from this work setting and learning how to communicate with different student groups, faculties, departments. Just that.

Us at the Arts Journal are grateful for the opportunity to interview Yifan and get to know more about her and the Arts On Campus.

Edited by: Sindey Amar 24’