Meet Sia Fang
Meet Sia Fang, a multidisciplinary artist from Suzhou, China, whose innovative approach has made a significant impact in New York, Shanghai, and Paris. Born in 1999, Fang's art seamlessly blends sculpture, textiles, and wearable art, driven by her experimental use of materials like object fragments, expired pharmaceuticals, and resin. Her work challenges traditional art boundaries and has been featured in prestigious publications such as ELLE USA and Vogue China, as well as exhibited by institutions like the Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
Escapism to Amore Fati, 2022, New York. Photo courtesy of Ashley Zhang.
Sia Fang has gained recognition for her unique wearable art and sculptures, displayed in key art hubs across the globe. She has also contributed to events by luxury brands including Cartier and Perrier-Jouët. By integrating art, fashion, and technology, she encourages viewers to rethink material narratives and their cultural implications.
Your artistic practice disrupts traditional boundaries between mediums. Can you discuss a seminal work that epitomizes your approach to blending fashion, art, and technology?
For me, the reason that I chose fashion design as my main focus in school was the intimacy between the wearer and the worn. The cloth, the textile, and the human body sentimentally interact with each other in silence. Therefore, I have always prioritized textile and materiality in all my fashion and wearable projects.
Back in 2022, I made a mini collection entirely with one tool, the 3D Doodler pen. A 3D pen is usually purchased for kids' activities and a creative entertaining process and it was never commonly used for large production. The structure it creates is crisp and not very durable, but on the other hand, I found the fragility in this product of technology appealing when it comes to setting the narrative for Escapism to Amore Fati, a project inspired by a traumatizing night out and eventually led to a discussion between the act of running away from severe incidences rather than embracing the reality.
Escapism to Amore Fati, 2022, New York. Photo courtesy of Ashley Zhang.
Instead of calling my wearable pieces fashion, I always call them wearable art as they are a medium for me to explore the external and internal substances in humans rather than a consumer product. I adopted a series of still objects that brought me back to the traumatizing night and attempted to disclose different elements that led to the bizarre ending of the incident in a metaphoric way in Escapism to Amore Fati. Making the construction still playful and relatively universal was intentional as I eventually embraced the turbulent side of my experience. How we describe that night as dramatic and traumatic is very ironic if I look back from now.
Escapism to Amore Fati, 2022, New York. Photo courtesy of Ashley Zhang.
How do you navigate the challenge of keeping your art both personally resonant and universally engaging, especially when experimenting with such diverse materials and themes?
I believe that good art has to start from a genuine heart and personal matters, and then push forward with those personal ties and emotional input. Eventually, using the sentiments as a magnifier to place and project yourself onto a more significant, communal matter.
To empathize with any greater matters, as an artist, I start from digging in before digging out. After untying all the knots around me, a thorough understanding starting from the small, personal things will lead to a reflection and projection unto the time, society, and the universe.
Disguise in Nature, the wearable art project that I spent almost 8 months on started from my attraction and repulsion to morbidity in humans. I enjoy reading into uncommon personas as much as exploring diverse materials and could never stop being attracted to the mystical and the unknown, even if it is a person that put me in danger or a material that I am severely allergic to.
Disguise in Nature, 2023, New York. Photo courtesy of Vince Cai.
In Disguise in Nature, I borrowed traits from camouflaged plants and animals that hide their edge in disguise to reimagine a new "skin" covering the flesh that grows in and out of twisted skeleton structures. The viewing experience will start with easiness due to the pastel-colored ceramic textured resin and butterfly-floral-like shapes, but soon the suspicion will rise as the revealing of the nature in these creatures - they are still skeletons. The art shows before it tells, therefore the people feel and think before they hear.
Disguise in Nature, 2023, New York. Photo courtesy of Vince Cai.
The global influence is evident in your work. Could you elaborate on how cultural experiences from Shanghai, New York, and Paris have shaped your artistic identity and expression?
What I create always has a close relationship with my current state of mind, and it will be ever-changing. There is one thread that ties my creations in different places and experiences together and my bodies of work are just different versions of me.
Shanghai was the constant and New York was the odds but now New York is the constant and Shanghai is the odds. Paris will always remain the accident as it was the only period that I focused on the idea of a place more than the idea of myself. Tabac Vins Marche, a conceptual art installation that could not sound more French, was created in the first year that I moved to Paris. The installation looks like any cliché wine & tobacco stall in Paris but when you get close enough, you will be shocked by what you read from the labels on the bottles and boxes - "Smoking in a cafe and read,” “Smoking supports autism,” "They say they could have fun without alcohol, they are lying,” written bilingually with my terrible French.
This installation shows a stereotypical but accurate understanding of the Parisien lifestyle, which I was a part of, sarcastically. On the other hand, the kitschiness of it also reflects my questioning of the Parisien identity, which became a lot bigger than my own identity while I was in Paris. Tabac Vins Marche foresaw the exact reason that I left - Paris to me was never going to be about who I am, but how Parisien I am. The moment I figured out that to be fully living my life in Paris, I would have to squish myself into the ideology and the box of a Parisien. I would have lost myself way before that happened. Therefore, I went on that one-way flight from CDG to JFK.
Can you discuss how technological elements enhance your creative expression and the impact they have on the viewer's experience of your art?
I work with a lot of machines in general. I was working exclusively with 3D printing for the entire year of 2023 as it was able to achieve a lot of fantastical sculptural shapes with precision. 3D printing breaks the boundaries between my imagination and physical reality and I also adore the mechanical and artificial side of it. It raises controversy around the material itself and automatically creates a distance.
Disguise in Nature, 2023, New York. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Reflecting on your extensive portfolio, is there a particular project or piece that stands out as a defining moment in your career, particularly one that challenged your creative boundaries?
That one project will be Saturday Night at Ellen’s. Introspection and Reimagination with a note of Sarcasm characterize all my works for the past 6 years, with just the transition from explicit to implicit that happened in 2019. Saturday Night at Ellen’s, the installation that recreated a scene of the bathroom at my favorite trashy bar, Ellen’s, during adolescence was outrageously explicit and absurdly implicit at the same time.
For this installation, I used a found toilet near my boarding school as the centerpiece, duplicated the graffiti of the bathroom at Ellen’s, and ornamented the fake walls with some random words that the visitors would put on the walls of the bathroom. To add my personalized touch to the installation, I recycled over 8 boxes of pills from the students in my school and decorated the toilet with a lot of trash posters and stickers from my peers.
One of the key ideas was to resemble indulgences and chaos that only adolescents could afford and celebrate, and pay tribute to that period of our life as a collective in the setting of an international school in nostalgia.
Saturday Night at Ellen’s, 2018, Shanghai. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Saturday Night at Ellen’s portrays an outburst of compulsion, with a hint of revenge consumption. The pills I collected from students were all originally distributed by the school nurse as the teens often fake sickness to skip classes. Under the splashes of striking colors, I also wanted the installation to be a bell ringer for the drug abuse issue among teens in boarding schools away from guardians and the potential risks in the indulging lifestyle. This installation will be an immortal milestone in my work, as this is the first project where the implicit meaning and concerns raised come into formation in the present.
Looking forward, what are the new territories or concepts you are excited to explore in your future projects, especially considering your multidisciplinary approach to art and design?
I am currently working on a new ceramic series called Arena, recycling defective scrapped fragments in the production process of Jun Porcelain, which was a precious material that I was supplied with by Da Song Royal Porcelain back in China. The process of porcelain manufacturing yields relatively low quantities of finished products, leading to significant waste generation. Therefore, I am repurposing these beautiful scraps, bringing new life into them by transforming porcelain scraps into works of sculptural art. I believe that the perfection is always found in imperfection. Below is a sneak peek into the first sculpture of the series.
Arena 000, 2024, New York. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Quick Series- ‘What These Words Mean to Sia Fang'
Transcendence - How transcendence manifests and exceeds traditional artistic boundaries
The worn has this intricate human relationship with the wearer and I cannot name any medium that gets closer to the human itself at the moment. The worn for me is the perfect vehicle to explore any human-centric subjects, therefore, I cannot get tired of making wearable art. When drawing the boundary between fashion and wearable art, it is important to separate or set up an emotional barrier.
The Papier is a dress made of recycled inflammable paper, but at the same time, the material is also extremely starchy and itchy. How much can one bear?
Obssesorize is a pair of heels made of mini playing cards, which could never be actually worn. Meanwhile, this un-wearable art is talking about desire and narcissism.
The Papier, 2019, Paris. Courtesy of the artist.
Obssesorize, 2018, New York. Courtesy of the artist.
Synthesis - The seamless blend of varied disciplines and cultural influences to create a unique and innovative artistic expression
Disguise in Nature Film, Directed by Maya Marzuki Peters.
Mañjusaka in Disguise, the most important piece of the Disguise in Nature series gained even more importance after the sculpture was broken and repaired twice. The first time, a few ribs broke in the transferring process of the sculpture. The second time, all the ribs were pulled out of the sculpture by hand for the film version of Disguise in Nature. I decided to reveal rather than conceal what this sculpture has been through.
Mañjusaka, in Chinese and Japanese culture, is the flower that blooms on the way to hell. It has the mission of guiding the dead to the next reincarnation. Another folk tale of it is that when a person sees someone that they may never meet again, these flowers bloom along the path. The process of breaking and rebuilding Mañjusaka in Disguise was a symbol of reincarnation in the belief of humanity, resistance to separation, and destiny in the encounters.
Mañjusaka in Disguise, 2023, New York. Photo courtesy of Ankur Maniar.
Fusion - Exploring fusion in artistry by merging technology, emotion, and visual art to craft immersive experiences
The Triptych was a digital art project I did in the pre-AI era, with one scanner, one model, and no other medium or software modification. As the scanning starts, the model also goes into motion. The idea of The Triptych was to create this series of imageries of alien beings from a different dimension peaking into our three-dimensional world.
The Triptych, 2020, Paris. Courtesy of the artist.
Sia Fang's work is a display of creativity and a conversation with her audience about identity, culture, and environmental concerns. She is poised to remain a vital force in the contemporary art scene, pushing creative boundaries and engaging her international audience with compelling, thought-provoking pieces.
