AFVS Alumni Gatherings: Michael Wang

The Carpenter Center is pleased to present a new series of Art, Film, and Visual Studies (AFVS) Alumni professional practice gatherings in our level-3 contemporary art galleries. These intimate, public conversations will bring together AFVS and Harvard students to engage directly with distinguished alumni from the department.

The student-focused series—supported by the Provostial Grant for Critical Humanities at Harvard and the Mignone Center for Career Success—will center on questions of professional practice, interdisciplinary trajectories, and life after the AFVS program. The gatherings aim to foster dialogue between current students and alumni who are shaping the field in diverse and innovative ways.

These sessions are free and open to the public, with priority given to Harvard students. Refreshments will be offered. To RSVP, please email us at [email protected].

Michael Wang (VES '03) uses systems that operate at both regional and planetary scales as media for art, addressing climate, ecology, extraction and capital. His works include Extinct in the Wild, a project that engages species that no longer exist in nature but persist under human care; 10000 li, 100 billion kilowatt-hours, a work that harnessed Shanghai’s hydropower-fueled electric grid to create a frozen facsimile of the glaciers at the origin of the Yangtze river; First Forest, a living replica of a Carboniferous forest installed in a disused coal-gas plant; and Carbon Copies, an exhibition linking the production of artworks to the release of greenhouse gases--envisioning all artists as "air artists." 

Wang's work was the subject of solo exhibitions at Prada Rong Zhai, Shanghai (2022), LMCC's Arts Center at Governors Island, New York (curated by Swiss Institute, 2019) and the Fondazione Prada, Milan (2017). His work has also been included in Elevation 1049 in Gstaad (2023), the 13th Shanghai Biennale (2021), Manifesta 12 in Palermo (2018) and the XX Bienal de Arquitectura y Urbanismo in Valparaíso (2017). In 2017, he was a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant.