Trash Club Graduates 2024: Athena Wang
Meet the Royal College of Art Graduate Who Intertwines Weaving, Art and Protest
When someone introduces themselves to you as a humanoid spaceship you are immediately captivated. The person orbiting in this spaceship is Athena Wang, who is currently enrolled on the MA Contemporary Art course at the Royal College of Art in London, UK.
Having gained their BA in Art History, Athena lands themself as a weaver, making their entire MA Final Collection out of intricate, entwined structures. Taking all aspects of the art, rooted in ancient cultures across the world, Athena describes their path leading up to conceptual realisation and their diverse, stimulating approach to their practice.
We sit down in Athena’s corner (or should I say cosmos) of the Contemporary Art studios where the walls are canvased with AI-printed paper strips, weaved pieces in progress, experimental guitar strums are humming in the background from a student’s sound project and Athena reveals all...
© Athena Wang, Royal College of Art 2024
How do you describe yourself as a creative?
I’m a humanoid spaceship. Everything flows in and out, yet the only thing the vessel holds is love. By 2024, I’ve been orbiting around the solar system for 26 years. It’s difficult to define my practice, but it currently revolves around paper weaving and sculpture. I also make performances and videos. However, I was trained in art history and I’ve worked as an archivist, so I also do some writing, archiving, and editing.
Where did you do your Art History degree?
At Peking University, Beijing.
And has that influenced your work as an artist now?
Art history is a laborious practice, and you always need to hunt, systemise, and unravel knowledge. I also love the solitary and laborious process in weaving, writing, and archiving. Art history is also a wormhole that connects several worlds. It not only allows me to see the interdisciplinary connections between art and technological and institutional frameworks through the study of the iconography of the image, but it also allows me to have a temporal and spatial sensitivity to materials and techniques. And most importantly, I think art history training has cultivated my curiosity and methodology when facing wicked problems. I do weaving with a lot of print and I cut them up into strips. For me, that's similar to a lot of archive work that I do. The ideology of the image is very central to my practice, whether it's weaving or art history.
When I was taking art history courses in Peking University, it was not Eurocentric, and it was not Sinocentric, and that gives me multi-entrances to the world of art. I was really enjoying Japanese and Indonesian art history back then, and I was also lucky to learn Gamelan on a ship and I got to go to Myanmar and Ghana to learn instruments, basket weavings, and history of local art.
When did you do that trip?
During my gap year in college when I was 19 years old. I got a scholarship to go on a cruise that sailed around the world, we took classes on the ship and we had field trips when we docked at harbours. We sailed 13 countries across the Pacific, the Indian, and the Atlantic.
© Athena Wang, Royal College of Art 2024
What country stood out to you the most?Myanmar.
It was during the Rohingya Genocide in 2018 that I visited a village in Seikphyu Township, near the Irrawaddy River, Myanmar. It was amid political upheaval that I first encountered the beauty and resistance of traditional Burmese weaving. In the village, there was an open-air handweaving factory of about 40 looms and about 40 women weavers were working there, behind it was a fabric dyeing and basket weaving factory where men were doing back-strap weaving. The living and working conditions were barely basic, but the geometrical patterns they wove were one of the most intricate and beautiful that I didn’t see anywhere else. And that was my first encounter with weaving, which I later learned that the fabric structure they wove is quite resistant and the vivid colour endures time. It was a very depressing time in Myanmar, but at the same time, people endure all the fluctuations, and the Burmese people I met were eager to communicate, and they were striving for life.
As an artist how do you react to what’s happening around the world? How can we carry on when so many people are suffering?
I think no matter how concerned you are about the world, you should not be deactivated by the frustration about it. To know what you stand for is very important but also carry on your own practice and see how you can use that to help in any way you can.
I attended a voguing ball in April and I thought that could be a chance for me to voice for Palestine as I think we don’t talk enough about it. During my runway walk, I held this ‘auction plate’ which listed statistics in the Gaza genocide and I wore a pageant sash I designed, with "We all know the system is a joke" on one side and "But who gets to decide what's new?" on the other, and on my ass a yellow sticker saying “You”. It’s not a frivolous act, we need to be constantly reminded of the scale, heaviness, and magnitude of what’s happening around us, we can’t avoid them.
How many are you making for your final project?
I plan to exhibit 20 pieces. My exhibition will be called “Flatland” because all my works are quite flat but when compiled together, they will be like a sculpture, a book, which has volume.
It will be a maximal way showing my progress in a year in RCA. Of course, I will be selecting pieces, but they will not be limited to one or two big prints or weavings. I would like to preserve them as they are and show all the pieces compiled into an art archive. I want people to have this excitement of information and sensory overload, to have tactile access to the artwork, which is usually a privilege reserved for artists themselves, collectors, and gallerists. I also have in mind to transform flat prints and weavings into a voluminous sculpture. The whole structure is like poetry, that every line in a poem, every page in the book, together construct a dream. In all, it will be showing everything that I am.
“I want to burn this image at the White Cliffs of Dover, I want to drown this image in the ocean.”
- Athena Wang
What are some of the main themes of each structure?
I think weaving, when the warp and weft are entangled onto each other, creates a dialogue, or relationship between two things. How images struggle against each other, distorted by each other, and eventually the compromise that they have to make. Through the technique of paper weaving on digital prints, I’m doing forensics on the surface/interface of the image, for instance, how the surface shows the images topologize weapons and wars, and how woven images tell non-linear stories of biological mutations.
What do you want them to take away from these images?
An honest me. What I enjoy doing, what I am thinking every day, what I think contemporary art can be.
How do you feel when you're weaving and when you're really in that process?
Meditative. I’m usually highly concentrated as if the world around me is completely not bothering me. Weaving, or any art I love, is usually intellectually stimulating and physically taxing. I just had a tutorial a couple of weeks ago and my tutor said, “Athena, you are always having an ongoing conversation for your work” and I couldn’t understand this comment. Now looking back, I can resonate with that. I am fascinated by weaving, so I learnt basket weaving, and weaving on a TC2 loom; I have woven with paper, vinyls, and videos; I want to burn this image at the White Cliffs of Seven Sisters; I want to drown that image in the sea. I'm always fuelled to try different new possibilities in one practice. I like that feeling of excitement and commitment, as if I’m treading through a new path which I just discovered.
© Athena Wang, Royal College of Art 2024
What is the teaching system like here at RCA?
It’s very self-directed. I’d like to think of my cohort as a support system: people would stop by my space and have conversations, from which I get inspired and solutions pop up.
How do you feel towards graduating soon?
I feel ready. I'm at this peaceful yet very exciting stage of my life.
Why did you choose RCA?
At that time, I felt my practice was very hybrid so I wanted a course that is multidisciplinary, so CAP (MA Contemporary Art Practice) seemed like the perfect space for me. Eventually, I found my practice here and I’ve had a good journey of discovery. I know that I can always pick up my other practices that I’ve done in the past, all the practices are related to each other in some ways.
You’ve come on such a long journey but what are your core values that always remain?
I feel like I'm just curious and I allow the world to come towards me, everything enriches the Athena universe. I guess that’s why I always keep this childlike curiosity and determination to seek truth.
What advice would you give your younger self venturing into the art world?
Don't be afraid, just do what you want to do. When I was in Beijing, I was studying art history, so I thought I was restricted to that. I was nervous to become a contemporary artist but really it’s not scary. We shouldn't live in fear of anything.
See Athena’s MA Contemporary Art graduate exhibition at the Royal College of Art Battersea campus from 20-23rd June 2024, open 12-6pm daily.
© Athena Wang, Royal College of Art 2024
