Lu Wei — Ink Shadows

Lu Wei's artworks include ink paintings, installations, videos, and artist's books in the form of handscrolls. Her works reference symbols of women across cultures, drawing from religious, literary, mythological, and mother archetypes to reflect on her experience of being a woman and her transition to motherhood. 

In addition to cultivating the tradition of ink painting techniques, she also incorporates ideas of gender issues and feminine thought inside her work, seeking to reinterpret and expand the understanding of gendered bodies and their images in Ink art history. 

The exhibition "Ink Shadows" develops and explores the unknown and creative feminine aspects revealed by "shadows" through Wei's ink art. 

From the perspective of a Christian worldview, "shadows" generally symbolize a dark side, concealing both the unknown and the feared. As discussed in Jungian psychology, "the shadow aspect" refers to the part of the inner self that cannot be understood in its entirety, where the personal and the collective mix and their distinctions blur. 

However, the system of a male-dominated culture and the history of colonization have divided both the female self and the female deity by attaching terrifying attributes to the powerful female goddesses and replacing them with male deities. This resulted in pushing the goddesses underground, severed from their original wholeness, including light and darkness. 

In Asia, many accounts of shadows are celebrated and considered in aesthetic discourses. For example, Junichiro Tanizaki's "In Praise of Shadows" describes the singularity of shadows in Japanese aesthetics. In the gradual and inexpressible tones of light and darkness, the shadows where no light has shone are precisely the place where beauty resides.

In the exhibition Ink Shadows, Lu Wei focuses on interpreting the ineffable "shadows" through the unique medium and spirituality of ink painting from a multicultural perspective across the past and present, aiming to heal and empower female characters who have historically been defined as negative.

The exhibition is curated by Material and made possible in part by the generous support of the Ministry of Culture in Taiwan and Taiwan National Culture and Arts Foundation.

My art practice encompasses ink paintings, artist books, installations, videos, and collaborations on creative and curatorial projects. I delve into topics of feminine thought, the intimate experiences of motherhood, and the gendered body. I challenge traditional interpretations of female figures and reinterpret motherhood, goddesses, animals, and landscape elements to reflect the complexities of women’s bodies, experiences, and identities. My works navigate different perspectives and environments while embracing a hybrid spiritual narrative, inviting the viewer to connect with the depth of these themes.

My interest in female imagery in religion, mythology, and historical narratives has also prompted me to consider ways to retrieve and evoke ancient cultures and souls that are gradually being forgotten in our times of globalization. I reinterpret images from various cultures through my contemporary point of view, living in this complicated world. Through the lens of women’s experiences, I recreate spaces within ink painting for narratives of embodied and unseen perspectives, offering a visual language that honors the complexity, power, and contradictions of gendered existence.

Lu Wei (b.1994) is a visual artist and curator based in Taipei, Taiwan. She received her bachelor's degree and a master's in Fine Arts at Taipei National University of the Arts. Lu Wei's artworks include ink paintings, installations, artist's books, handscrolls, and screens. Her works reference symbols of women across cultures, drawing from religious, literary, and mythological figures as well as mother archetypes to reflect on her experiences as a woman and her transition to motherhood. In addition to cultivating the tradition of ink painting techniques, she also incorporates ideas of gender issues and feminine thought in her work, seeking to reinterpret and expand the understanding of gendered bodies and their images in the history of ink painting.

In 2023, Lu Wei was artist-in-residence at Grey Projects in Singapore, a collaborative multi-year program with Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, sponsored by the Asia Pacific Exchange Program and Taipei Artist Village. Lu Wei was awarded several important grants, including the grants from Taiwanese National Culture and Arts Foundation, and the Taiwanese Ministry of Culture grants. In 2023, Lu Wei was awarded a grant from Taiwanese Ministry of Culture grant, which included a three-month artist residency at 18th Street Arts Center in Los Angeles, CA. In 2024, she was awarded a grant from Taiwanese National Culture and Arts Foundation for a 5 months curatorial project in Utah. During her stay in the United States, Lu Wei exhibited her solo show My Sole Desires at Material in Salt Lake City, UT, and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) acquired two of her artworks for their permanent collection. The Taiwanese American Foundation also acquired several of Lu Wei’s paintings as part of their permanent collection.

Lu Wei has participated in numerous group exhibitions in galleries and museums, including Ames Yavuz (Singapore, 2025), ER Gallery (Taipei, Taiwan, 2024), Absolute Space for the Arts (Tainan, Taiwan, 2023), OUR Museum (New Taipei City, Taiwan 2022), Silpakorn University (Bangkok, Thailand, 2022), Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (Prague, Czech Republic, 2022), SOKA Art (Tainan, Taiwan, 2021), Mezzo Art (Tainan, Taiwan, 2021), Taipei Artist Village (Taipei, Taiwan, 2020), and AKI Gallery (Taipei, Taiwan, 2020). She is also a recognized and celebrated curator with several national and international exhibitions, including shows at Taitung Art Museum (Taitung, Taiwan, 2023) for which was nominated for the 22nd Taishin Art Award, MOCA Taipei (Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei) for which she received the “curator's incubator program @museums” grant from the National Culture and Arts Foundation, and at Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C- Lab) for 2023’s Taiwan Annual.

Instagram: @luwei_artist