Wei-Li YEH
Taiwan in the summer of 1996, his first after fifteen years of emigration, fueled his thesis work-in-progress on the themes surrounding displacement and assimilation in direct correlation to cultural differences and racial politics.
Following graduate school, Yeh moved to Brooklyn, New York City, where he would spend the last five years of his residence in the United States. In New York City, Yeh struggled like most young artists while holding part and full-time jobs, though his work would find its way into commissioned projects and group exhibitions at Columbia University, New York University, Bronx Museum of Art and the International Center of Photography. Yeh would go on to create his seminal photography work Guest: On the Subject of Home, presented to the public from his own studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn which he named “Septemberly Studio” in late 2001, shortly after 9/11.
Since returning to live permanently in Taiwan in 2002, Yeh has been active as an artist, curator, teacher, and instigator. His large-scale and long-termed collective and collaborative-based practice and projects are seen in major projects such as Treasure Hill Tea + Photo Project (THTP) and the ongoing Antiquity-like Rubbish Research & Development Syndicate. From 2015 to present, Yeh has been focusing on re-accessing and reactivating the life and work of the deceased artist Shih-Chiang Yeh (1926-2012) by archiving and restoring printed matters, artworks, and inanimate objects, curating and designing exhibition and architectural structures. This ongoing work would find its designated home in the preservation and reconstruction design of two separate architectural structures and their exterior environs which function as the elder artist’s residence museum and archive center of which Yeh oversees.
Yeh’s work has been shown and collected internationally since mid-90’s including Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Lithuania, Slovenia, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, and USA. His photographic and text-based projects continue to explore the dynamics of the individual within collective practices, centering on both the personal and socio-political relationships between oneself and the city in which one resides.
His most recent work entitled “Looking for Maltaverne”, based on the last book of the famed French author Francois Mauriac, was realized at the Ygrec Art Centre of Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy, in November, 2021 during which he was a visiting artist and professor in residence.
Yeh currently lives and works in Shuinandong, Ruifang, Taiwan with his wife, Yu-Hsin Wu, and son, Laebu Booker Yeh.