By Melanie Pankau on May 05, 2023 Image CarryOn Homes, 2017-present Photography and audio recorded interviews Photo by Shun Yong In this interview, interdisciplinary artist Peng Wu weaves together deeply personal experiences as an Asian queer immigrant with the history of alien labor in North American colonialism in order to challenge the oppressive narratives and foster healing, liberation, and resilience. Melanie Pankau: You describe yourself as an interdisciplinary artist and designer that collaborates across disciplines and cultures to create participatory art installations to address various urgent social issues including immigration, health disparity, and queer rights. Could you tell us more about your practice and the contemporary art strategies you use to talk about these topics in your work. Peng Wu: As an interdisciplinary artist and designer, I explore strategies that effectively create spaces fostering alternative modes of knowing¡ªknowing oneself, other human or non-human beings, history, and most importantly, the relationships among them. The way we think is constrained by the physical spaces society has designed: classrooms, galleries, city streets, and parks. These spaces subtly influence our eagerness to engage in dialogue and the subjects we touch upon, thus perpetuating the oppressive nature of the system. Drawing from personal struggles, including growing up queer in China, immigrating to the U.S., and dealing with chronic sleep disorders, I strive to create public spaces that center on marginalized communities, oppressed histories, and voices, hopefully contributing to a more just future. Exploring strategies such as interdisciplinary collaboration, collective artmaking, community building, installation, and performance, my practice prioritizes the integration of art into everyday life and emphasizes that these approaches extend beyond Western contemporary art. Artmaking serves as a means to understand the personal, social, and historical root causes of our collective struggles and to create spaces for sharing this knowledge, ultimately fostering opportunities for healing, liberation, and resilience for those who share similar experiences. In one of the Jin Paper Burning participatory events, I created a print with the image of me and my now-husband on one side of the street; my father sits in a wheelchair on the other side of the street. Through the spiritual ritual I ¡°came out¡± to my father after he passed away. For instance, the Jin Paper Burning project is a participatory workshop that serves a practical purpose: addressing the longing to communicate with our ancestors in the Chinese, Asian immigrant, and diaspora communities. This project was reinvented based on the family tradition my father taught me when I was young, influenced by the spiritual ritual of burning joss paper still practiced in China and many Asian countries. When my father passed away during the pandemic, I felt the urge to keep the tradition alive. The project rejects the messages preprinted on commercially available joss paper, which often represent capitalist and sexist values. During the workshops, participants deeply reflect on their life concerns and relationships with their ancestors, using linocut printing on handmade paper to create individual messages for their loved ones. In the end, we burn the handmade joss paper together to send the messages to the other realm. I have hosted workshops in galleries in China and the U.S., as well as public libraries, bookstores, and my backyard. You have produced several participatory events about insomnia and sleeping. How did these projects originate and what manifestations did they take? How were the participants affected? What did you learn from their interactions in the environments that you created? During the time I was trying to secure my next visa renewal, I noticed my insomnia getting worse. Night after night, I couldn't sleep. Without health insurance at that time, because I just quit my corporate job, I could not seek medical help. So, I turned to my inner artist and said, "Ok, you solve this please!¡± I proposed the idea of searching for a cure for my insomnia as an art project to the curator at the Weisman Art Museum. The University of Minnesota Medical School soon funded the project through the Target Studio for Creative Collaboration residency at the museum. I thought to myself, "Oh, they must be as desperate as me!" After a year of research with a sleep scientist, I understood the sleep issue as a severe global public health crisis. It is not a health issue that doctors and hospitals can solve easily. For instance, they can do nothing when pharmaceutical companies flood the shelves with all the new "sleep drugs." Weeks ago, I went to Walgreens to get some stomach relief for my partner. My jaw dropped when I saw various sleep drugs and nutrient supplements covering the multiple shelves top to bottom. Various strategies of persuasion are used in the package design¡ªsome bottles with soothing colors and joyful illustrations look like harmless gummy candies, while others appear like high-tech extracts from all-natural organic plants with exotic names. As I delved into my research and engaged with the public through a series of events during my residency, the intricate connections between my sleep disorder and the broader socio-cultural landscape began to crystallize. As Jonathan Crary astutely observes in his book "24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep," the inexorable expansion of capitalism has rendered sleep the final frontier inhibiting perpetual consumption and production. In our relentless 24/7 society, sleep becomes an unproductive, even despised aspect of life, culminating in a global public health crisis that disproportionately affects marginalized communities, particularly those hailing from immigrant backgrounds who have historically been exploited in the United States. Throughout my residency, I crafted several immersive installation artworks designed to facilitate participatory events. In a departure from traditional hospital settings, I invited neurologists, psychologists, and physicians to engage in unconventional conversations with the audience in the space of my art installations. Daydream Chapel was one of the art installations I created and collectively built with soft yarn strings. The 16 feet wide, 40 feet tall installation envisions a future of healing through equitable exchanges of knowledge between healers and those seeking solace. The Daydream Chapel serves as a sanctuary where rest, breath, and wonder are revered and prioritized. Within this space, I strive to foster an environment that engenders healing, liberation, and resilience for all who share my struggles, inviting participants to explore their personal, social, and historical connections to their own experiences. Daydream Chapel, 2019 Yarn strings 16 x 35 ft Photo by Boris Oicherman Daydream Chapel intends to create a spiritual and sacred space that centers the very basic human need: rest. In the context of our increasingly restless culture, Daydream Chapel facilitates the simple but profound posture of laying down - an iconic posture of Reclining Budhha commonly seen in many Asian countries. The posture symbolizes the ultimate peace and the in-between status of conscious and unconscious, life and death. Through practicing this buddha posture in this dedicated space I hosted regular public events to have restful conversations with sleep doctors and participants.