Image: Caryn Wei Ya Xie, "matrimony.exe", oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in., 2024

Profile
Caryn Wei Ya Xie is a Chinese-Canadian visual artist and educator based in Toronto. By appropriating digital aesthetics to reimagine a personal photographic archive, Xie's oil paintings interrogate various facets of Asian personhood in Western contemporary life. These works, which draw from the Chinese Neo-Realist tradition, ultimately translate a personal history of immigration into a broader conversation on the diasporic experience of fragmented identity and memory. 

Base of Activity: Toronto, Canada
Media Used: Oil painting

Selected CV:
1. Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours), Queen's University, 2024
2. "Love ends. But what if it doesn't?" Duo Exhibition with Meenakashi Ghadial, Union Gallery, 2024
3. Liu Shiming Foundation Scholarship, 2024

Project Plan
During my time at AIR 3331, I plan to continue my practice of investigating techno-Orientalist histories through a contemporary lens. By drawing inspiration from Tokyo's vivid material culture, including its unique visual, advertising, and architectural languages, I hope to develop a small body of work that deconstructs techno-Orientalism's visual roots in Asian urban spaces and its enduring representations of Asian cultures, bodies, and environments.