The Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Visual Arts at Princeton University will present “Self-preservation,” an installation by senior Wendy Li examining how memories are created, erased, manipulated and forgotten. Installed in the format of a museum exhibition, the work and objects document the artist’s process of remembering and of constructing history and identity from images and documents. The work will be on view March 2 through 6 from 12:00 to 7:00 p.m. in Room 301 at 185 Nassau Street. A reception will be held on March 5 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public.
Li, from Philadelphia, is a major in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs with a focus on international development and how economic development affects women’s experiences. She is also earning certificates in French and in visual arts at the Lewis Center. Her senior thesis project in her major relates in some ways to her artistic work.
Photo by Wendy Li
“This is an exhibition about exhibiting,” explains Li. She draws upon an archive of family photographs and written accounts, which span from 1930 to the present. Her family immigrated to Canada from China in the 1980s and then moved to the U.S. These archival materials document political and social revolutions, immigration, technological change, life and death as experienced by Li and her family. “Just as much as we document our lives to remember, to celebrate, and to share,” she notes, “the archives I explore are also shaped by pride, fear, shame, and vulnerability. Yet what we see is also dictated by underlying political forces, such as revolutions, reforms, and migration. I question not only what is shown, but what is absent, how memories are created, erased, manipulated, and forgotten by ourselves and by the outside world.”
Among the materials Li has assembled that demonstrate the process of constructing memory and history are the events and people that her family chose to photograph over the years and to collect in albums. Her own personal diaries, kept from the age of 12, also represent how an individual documents his or her own personal history. The exhibition will be installed much like a historical museum, further demonstrating the conscious choices made about representing a curated history.
Li’s ideas behind this project extend to thinking about the body as an archive. An individual’s genetics and aging also document an individual’s life.
While not tied directly to her exhibition, Li’s senior thesis for her Woodrow Wilson School concentration also explores changing cultural attitudes. Her research examines how increasing participation of rural women in the workforce in China changes conceptions of female economic empowerment in those regions.
