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Vectors: The Artaxis Fellowship in its First Five Years

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Soe Yu Nwe

2017 Artaxis Fellow
Soe Yu Nwe Vectors profile photo

Soe Yu Nwe is a prolific artist from Myanmar. After earning her MFA from RISD, Soe has participated in numerous international residencies. Soe exhibits her work internationally in galleries and museums. Soe’s work has recently been acquired by the acclaimed Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art in Australia. Soe was named in 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30: Art & Style List. Soe Yu Nwe’s artistic practice explores notions self in relation to nature and culture. Reflecting on her own multicultural identity as being fluid, fragile and fragmented, she creates hybridized bodies by referencing the viscera and the botanical in nature’s various states of growth, decay and death. Soe Yu’s experience of living cross-culturally has inspired her to reflect upon identity through making- conceiving it as a fluid, fragile and fragmented entity. Through transfiguration of her emotional landscape by poetically depicting nature and body in parts, she ponders the complexities of individual identity in globalized society.

Statement

In my work, I explore different ways of expressing my experience of alienation, confusion and pain as a cultural outsider by creating narrative spaces that explore the lines between insides and outsides. Playing on the idea of the body being the house that shelter the spirit, I create work that is symbolic of the self. I instill the metaphorical sculptural self with a sense of organicity and intricacy by gesturing the bodily- the viscera and skeletal, morphing into the botanical to express the vitality, delicacy, and injury of the spirit inhabiting and animating the forms. As a third generation Chinese immigrant in Myanmar, I seek inspirations from cultural practices of ethnic Chinese and the local Burmese. Local animistic beliefs, folklores and mythologies inspire the imagery in my work. I am particularly interested in the female figures in Buddhist mythologies. In my most recent body of work, I explored creating hybrid bodies using imagery of Naga Maedaw, a dragon queen in Buddha’s birth stories, Jataka Tales. Art making, to me, is an ontological quest. I explore the nature of being by attempting to depict the ephemerality of the human condition. Condensation and displacement of violent desires, tender affections, spiritual hopes, sexual instincts and maternal conflicts are intimated with metaphors and symbols of nature’s cyclical growth, decay and death.Through exploring the otherness within the self, I hope to create enigmatic bodies, comprised of poetic spaces dwelled by the liminal self, fragmented and dislocated, in search and in transition, captured in a moment of growth and transformation.

Soe Yu Nwe, "Botanical Woman #3"

“Botanical Woman”

16 x 19 x 31 in
Glazed hand built porcelain, gold and mother of pearl luster
cone 6
2018

Soe Yu Nwe, "Botanical Woman #3"

“Botanical Woman”

16 x 19 x 31 in
Glazed hand built porcelain, gold and mother of pearl luster
cone 6
2018

Soe Yu Nwe, "Botanical Woman #3"

“Botanical Woman”

16 x 19 x 31 in
Glazed hand built porcelain, gold and mother of pearl luster
cone 6
2018

Soe Yu, New, “Naga Maedaw Serpent (Heart of the Wise)”

“Naga Maedaw Serpent (Heart of the Wise)”

15 H x 52 W x 19 D (inches)
Glaze and oxides, cone 6, luster decoration
Porcelain
2018

In the birth story of Buddha, the Jataka Tales, Naga Maedaw (Naga Queen), Vimala, longed to hear the King’s sage, Vidhura Panditta (the Bodhisatta) speaks. She feigned ill and told the Naga King only Vidhura’s heart could cure her. The story enfolds narrating how the Bodhisatta used his wisdom to save himself.

In this sculpture, I expressed Naga Maedaw’s form as a hybridized being between anthropomorphic creature and the serpentine, lending her resemblance to a mythical creature in Chinese creationist story, Nu Wa, the mother Goddess of the universe and the creator of human beings. The Chinese myth narrates that Nu Wa created human beings in resemblance of her upper half of the body; her lower half, being a serpent.

Soe Yu Nwe, “Light Green Burmese Python”

“Light Green Burmese Python”

40 in H x 73 in W x 8 in D
Porcelain, glaze and oxides, luster cone 10
2018

In these specimen pieces, I adopted a snake, my Chinese zodiac animal, as a self-image to explore and express notions of self as a woman. Through the depiction of a wounded and dissected body of a snake, I disclose my inner conflicts and psychological wounds. In this particular piece, I hope to narrate a sense of renewal and growth within the opened body of the snake.

Soe Yu Nwe, “Light Green Burmese Python”

“Light Green Burmese Python”

40 in H x 73 in W x 8 in D
Porcelain, glaze and oxides, luster cone 10
2018

In these specimen pieces, I adopted a snake, my Chinese zodiac animal, as a self-image to explore and express notions of self as a woman. Through the depiction of a wounded and dissected body of a snake, I disclose my inner conflicts and psychological wounds. In this particular piece, I hope to narrate a sense of renewal and growth within the opened body of the snake.

Soe Yu New, “Feminine Wound”

“Feminine Wound”

5.5 ft H x 6 ft W x 8 in D
Glaze and oxides, cone 10, luster decoration
Porcelain
2015

In these specimen pieces, I adopted a snake, my Chinese zodiac animal, as a self-image to explore and express notions of self as a woman. Through the depiction of a wounded and dissected body of a snake, I disclose my inner conflicts and psychological wounds.

Soe Yu New, “Feminine Wound”

“Feminine Wound”

5.5 ft H x 6 ft W x 8 in D
Glaze and oxides, cone 10, luster decoration
Porcelain
2015

In these specimen pieces, I adopted a snake, my Chinese zodiac animal, as a self-image to explore and express notions of self as a woman. Through the depiction of a wounded and dissected body of a snake, I disclose my inner conflicts and psychological wounds.

Soe Yu New, “Feminine Wound”

“Feminine Wound”

5.5 ft H x 6 ft W x 8 in D
Glaze and oxides, cone 10, luster decoration
Porcelain
2015

In these specimen pieces, I adopted a snake, my Chinese zodiac animal, as a self-image to explore and express notions of self as a woman. Through the depiction of a wounded and dissected body of a snake, I disclose my inner conflicts and psychological wounds.

Soe Yu Nwe, “Naga Maedaw”

“Naga Maedaw”

20 x 14 x 15 in
Porcelain, glaze and oxides, luster
cone 10
2018

Soe Yu Nwe, “Naga Maedaw”

“Naga Maedaw”

20 x 14 x 15 in
Porcelain, glaze and oxides, luster
cone 10
2018

Soe Yu Nwe, “Pink Serpent”

“Pink Serpent” (detail)

70 x 5 x 42 in
Porcelain, glaze and oxides, luster
cone 10
2018

Soe Yu Nwe, “Pink Serpent”

“Pink Serpent”

70 x 5 x 42 in
Porcelain, glaze and oxides, luster
cone 10
2018

In these specimen pieces, I adopted a snake, my Chinese zodiac animal, as a self-image to explore and express notions of self as a woman. In this particular piece, I hope to narrate a sense of renewal, transformation and growth within the body of the snake.

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