Project Space Resident

Wayne Liu

April 21 – May 19, 2026

Artist Statement

In Time Past & Time Present, I approach the self as an archaeological site, excavating ancestral memory through experimentation in the photo darkroom. Each session at the enlarger—situated between the negative and the positive—is both an act of remembrance and forgetting, like waking from an intense dream that dissolves in the moment of recall. In this reverie, the image becomes serialized through repetition, yet each print remains singular, shaped by intuitive and unrepeatable exposure times.

Each installation uses photographs as spatial fragments, assembling a fractured temporal rhythm that speculates on familial histories across China, Taiwan, and the United Staes. Dust and the warping of prints act as material witnesses to time’s passage, echoing narratives obscured by intergenerational migration. Installations vary in form, with prints layered, pinned, or scattered to reflect memory’s fragile architecture and the haunting presence of the past—never dead, never past.

Bio

Wayne Liu (born 1979) engages with the complexities of identity shaped by his life between Taiwan, his birthplace, and the United States. This continual movement informs both his sense of belonging and his artistic practice. Navigating the dissonant spaces between cultures—such as the dense, sensory world of a Taiwanese wet market and the sterile order of an American supermarket—his identity remains in flux, never fully resolved. Through installations that scatter photographs like words forming fragmented sentences, Wayne examines and unsettles fixed notions of memory, history, and the photographic medium itself.

VSW Project Space Residencies are supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the New York State Legislature, Monroe County, and Joy of Giving Something. Photography-based artists participating in the program receive support from the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation.