In Conversation: Yu-Wen Wu
Join us for a compelling conversation with artist Yu-Wen Wu, whose interdisciplinary practice navigates themes of migration, transformation, and memory. Blurring the boundaries between the natural and human-made, Wu’s evocative works invite reflection on identity, place, and belonging. Wu will be joined by curators Gannit Ankori and Pieranna Cavalchini to discuss her recent work, Reigning Beauty (2025) and Recitations (2024), currently on view at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Rose Art Museum.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Yu-Wen Wu (b. 1958, Taipei, Taiwan) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores the intersections of art, science, and social and cultural issues. She has been awarded numerous public art commissions, including Lantern Stories (2020 and 2022), commissioned by the Greenway Conservancy, and The Poetry of Reason at Tufts University in Somerville, MA. Wu was the recipient of a 2021 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship and the 2023 James and Audrey Foster Prize at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. In 2024, she joined the Stepping Stone Cohort of the Trellis Art Fund in New York and served as Artist-in-Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where her design for the museum’s façade will be installed in June 2025. Her work is held in numerous private and public collections, including the Boston Public Library, the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, MA, and the Princeton University Art Museum in Princeton, NJ.
Pieranna Cavalchini is an arts professional with experience in museums, and not-for-profit institutions, and an internationally recognized curator with experience and knowledge of current art practice. She is currently the Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where she directs the Artist-in-Residence Program and has organized over 34 exhibitions and produced catalogues and artist books.
This program is held in conjunction with the exhibition, Fabricated Imaginaries: Crafting Art, August 20, 2025–May 31, 2026.