"The global turmoil caused by the pandemic, wars, mass migration, and extreme weather events, combined with the Chinese zodiac’s Year of the Dragon, are the contexts in which I created Heaven and Earth."

Celebrate Lunar New Year with an engaging conversation with artist Wu Lan-Chiann, whose spectacular paintings Heaven and Earth are currently on display in the Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Gallery of China.

Inspired by Qing Dynasty red lacquer work in the Museum’s collection, these two works continue a long-standing collaboration between ROM and the artist. 

With Wu Lan-Chiann's dragon painting as a backdrop, Lan-Chiann and host, Wen-chien Cheng, explore the artist’s contemporary artistic practice, her traditional Chinese ink painting training, and how she both references and expands on the deep history of Chinese painting in her intricately detailed work.

Speakers: 

Wu Lan-Chiann

Wu Lan-Chiann received her BFA, with highest honors, from the Chinese Culture University in Taipei, Taiwan, and holds a MA from New York University’s Fine Art Department. Her paintings center on expressing core human values that connect people across time, space, and cultures, and give meaning to life.

Since 1995, she has exhibited in Canada, China, Japan, Taiwan, United States, and the United Kingdom, including: Reflections - Contemporary Ink Paintings by Wu Lan-Chiann, a solo exhibition at the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath, November 2015 - May 2016. Her work is collected in Australia, Europe, Asia, and North America by such prestigious institutions as the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Princeton University Art Museum, and Royal Ontario Museum. Wu Lan-Chiann’s most recent paintings Heaven and Earth, a majestic pair of dragons, are on view in ROM’s China Art Gallery in celebration of the Year of the Dragon.

Wen-chien Cheng

Wen-chien Cheng joined the ROM in October 2011, as the Louise Hawley Stone Chair of East Asian Art. She is cross appointed with the Department of Fine Arts and East Asia Studies at the University of Toronto. Her Ph.D. is in the History of Art from the University of Michigan, where her specialty was Chinese painting. She has held postdoctoral fellowships at the J. Paul Getty Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution. Curatorial work, research, and teaching have been the three major parts of her academic training and experience.

Dr. Cheng is responsible for developing a dynamic program of collection-based scholarship through acquisitions and permanent and temporary exhibitions. Her major area of research is premodern Chinese painting, and her research approach is a contextualized study of visual culture.

Event captured on February 13, 2024.