30 april 2025, Wouter van den Eijkel
Spreading Elegance: Evelyn Taocheng Wang’s autofiction
A series and an installation by Chinese-Dutch artist Evelyn Taocheng Wang is currently on view at Galerie Fons Welters. Over the past decade, Wang has made a name for herself with compositions that combine Chinese and European styles. You might call her work ‘autofiction’. Wang weaves personal experiences with myths, fairy tales, literature and art history, reflecting on themes such as body politics, immigration and language — always with a light sense of humour.
The central work is the 2019 installation "Spreading Elegance". For this piece, Wang gave away garments from her wardrobe in exchange for a personal letter on the theme of elegance. Fourteen tables display the thoughts of the recipients on this subject. Alongside each letter, Wang created a work on paper. Also on view is work from the series "Sayings of picked up" (2019), in which she — as the name suggests — combines phrases she picked up here and there with exercises from an intensive Dutch language course, traditional Dutch oliebollen and Mondrian’s palette.
The exhibition 'Spreading Elegance' can be seen at Galerie Fons Welters until 10 May 2025.
Spreading Elegance, Galerie Fons Welters
“It seems like … Joris works a lot, but actually he often spends hours chatting with his friends.” It’s one of the practice sentences from Chapter 10: Repetition of Words and Connections. In the blanks, Evelyn Taocheng Wang has filled in the correct answer—alsof/as if—with a fountain pen. The exercises reflect her decision to improve her Dutch.
Evelyn Taocheng Wang (Chengdu, China, 1981) lives and works in Rotterdam. She arrived in the Netherlands in 2012 for a two-year residency at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. Before that, she studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt and at the art academy in Nanjing. In 2019, she won the Dolf Henkes Prize. The following year, she won the ABN AMRO Art Prize, which was followed by the exhibition 'Het bloemblaadje, dat tijdens het ochtendkrieken was gevallen, paktte ik op in de avondschemering' (with spelling error) at the Hermitage.
Context machine
Most newcomers want to learn the language of their new country to find their way, get a job, understand government letters, ask for directions or simply make conversation. Wang’s reason was far less practical. On 17 August 2019, she attended a concert and emailed friends and acquaintances afterward:
Dear friends,
Tonight, at ten o’clock, during a concert at the Luther Museum Amsterdam, I completely forgot my English! But my Dutch is still not great…
Kind regards,
Evelyn Taocheng Wang
Spreading Elegance, Galerie Fons Welters
For the recipients, it must have been a cryptic message, as if language were something you could forget to bring or accidentally leave on a train. But for Wang, the message was crystal clear.
During the concert, she realised how strange memory works. Like music, language can evoke memories. It can serve as a vessel for memories, but also for identity. Could improving her Dutch also strengthen her Dutch identity? Wang wondered. Later that day, she emailed again: from now on, all communication with her must be in Dutch. Soon after, she began an intensive language course at the Vrije Universiteit.
Switching from English also meant letting go of the quintessential migrant language. For Wang, it meant learning yet another language and undergoing yet another deeply personal experience. “I think new language learning means ‘rebirth’ and ‘repetition’. It gives me a chance to form memory: what shall I forget. I am a circumstance animal; I am a context machine. I like change all the time.”
The works in the "Sayings of picked up" series take the form of a Chinese handscroll (to be read from right to left), combining exercises from this course with memories and associations. The building where she took the course reminded her of high-rise buildings from her youth in China. She paired Rotterdam’s best oliebollen with expressions she heard on the street: crazy about, use your head, run up to, put under pressure, give a push, bit by bit. Her preserved spelling mistakes, like in 'Het bloemblaadje…', reflect both a yearning for and failure at assimilation—a self-imposed standard that proves utopian.
Spreading Elegance, Galerie Fons Welters
Spreading Elegance
The decision to communicate solely in Dutch also impacted the French exhibition space FRAC, for which Wang developed "Spreading Elegance". Instead of finalising the exhibition communication in English, Wang switched halfway to a French-Dutch language combination. The full installation of letters and works on paper was shown at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 2020 and at the X Museum in Beijing the following year. Fourteen of the twenty tables are on display at Galerie Fons Welters.
In 2018, Wang had given away some pieces from her wardrobe on social media. “I have decided that all of my clothes are art work already; and you?” she posted. For the exhibition at FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, she first linked this to the idea of elegance. For years, Wang had purchased clothing from the French fashion house agnès b.—so much so that it could be considered a collection. For Wang, the style of agnès b. epitomises European elegance. She decided to give away the entire collection.
Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Sayings of Picked-Up (Best Oliebollen from Rotterdam), No.3, 2019, Galerie Fons Welters
Wang selected the recipient of each item based on their personality. In return, all she asked for was a handwritten letter about elegance. Wang gave rather ambiguous instructions to the letter writers, allowing them the freedom to elaborate however they wished. Topics ranged from fashion and elegance to the gaze of the other, family, education and gender.
For instance, Müge Yilmaz wrote that, as the eldest in a Turkish family in Amsterdam, she was treated and dressed as a boy by her parents and developed an emotional bond primarily with her father. Maria von Mier associated elegance mostly with her grandmother, who never left the house without wearing perfume. She was an elegant figure from a privileged background, but this turned out to be a façade: she was trapped in a marriage with a man who, while a judge and financially comfortable, was secretly homosexual.
The ‘price’ for the garment was insight into the recipient’s perspective and experience. The result is a sensitive and intimate correspondence that can only be fully understood by the two participants. By adding a work on paper to each letter, Wang retains artistic authorship over this deeply personal project.
The exhibition 'Spreading Elegance' will be on view at Galerie Fons Welters in Amsterdam until 10 May.
