Ada Yueting Wu

SCULPTURE

Ada Yueting Wu is an interdisciplinary artist born in China and currently based in the United States. Through installation, performance and sound, she creates visceral experiences that critically examine the production of silence and truth within systems of control. Her practice critiques systems of control through highlighting counter narratives, and unearthing conflicts and contradictions. By subjecting the body to counter forces or exposing it as a malfunctioning circuit within various systems, such as language, ideology and collective memories, she scrutinizes relationships of power and disciplines.

APRIL 14, 2025

What drew you to sculpture as a way of working, and how has your relationship to it changed over time?

I was trained in sculpture in my Bachelor’s of Fine Arts. And through my education, I learned how to manipulate substance, form, and space.

What drew me to sculpture was its material-based approach: understanding the sources of different materials and dissecting their physicalities. During my time working in sculpture, none of the traditional materials felt right, and I was always looking for more.

That changed when I encountered performance and sound. Truly understanding a medium takes rigorous perseverance. I have discovered my own body and sound to be my materials of resistance that evoke such perseverance: How can I control or let go of the inherent physicalities that I am born with? How can I dissect the substance of something that we seemingly cannot touch or see? In this way, the process of creation becomes an act of resistance and struggle, of internal and external forces.

Although I rarely do “sculptural” works these days, I still consider sculpture to be my mother tongue. Employing its material-based language, I seek to develop an interdisciplinary approach to performance, sound, and a variety of media, to evoke more possibilities.

Your practice moves fluidly between performance, sound, and installation. How do you understand the relationship between space, body, and object in your work?

My practice is experiential. Different elements work together to excavate intensity within me and pass it through to the audience.

I see these elements (performance, sound, installation) not as separate beings, but deeply entangled forces that shape each other. The body senses and impacts the space surrounding it, and vice versa. Meanwhile, objects/structures externalize and amplify the body’s internal states - they are collaborators in the unfolding of the performance.

I am interested in how structures and sound can embody a larger force, something the body wrestles with and ultimately becomes one with. Space is activated through the tension between the body and the force. The installation is what remains; it sets up the condition for the encounter and preserves its residues.

Much of your work seems to grapple with malfunction, friction, or dissonance. What draws you to those moments where systems break down or fail to function?

What you are describing are the threshold moments that I am always after. I see these moments as ruptures, and dissonance as a form of resistance and disruption. The rupture in the system and the body reveals their limits and allows something new to emerge. These moments are not about failing, but reaching a limit and seeking to overcome it. I am interested in how these ruptures are sites for transformation. The moments when things fall apart are the moments when new things are born. And my practice is about negotiating new possibilities at the threshold of collapse and emergence.

Do you think of your works as self-contained forms, or as a part of larger ecosystems — social, political, or psychological?

I don’t see my work as self-contained. They are always part of a larger system. My works often emerge from existential states shaped by socio-political forces that have been internalized, resisted, and transformed through the body.

In terms of live performances, endurance works, and audience participation, I am influenced by the theories of Artaud, and concepts of theater of cruelty and theater of revolts. In terms of control and power, my works are informed by Foucault, Arendt, and Mbembe’s writings, all of which shed light on the relationship between spaces of power and the body.

My practice is rooted in the body as a site of resistance, vulnerability, and transformation. In the times of turbulence, I believe there is a need for works that craft space for raw and unfiltered encounters, that evoke the possibility that transformation, of self and system, is still possible.

You’ve mentioned silence as something that can be produced or controlled. How do you try to give shape or presence to silence in your work?

Conceptually, I am interested in silence in that it suggests absence and erasure. I subvert the silence by revealing what has been erased. At the same time, I use silence as a site of refusal, opacity, and resistance. For example, in “Interfere and Intervene”, recordings of historical voices diminish as the audience interacts with the installation, bringing attention to shared complicity and the intentional act of erasure.

When you’re making work about power and control, what kind of response do you hope to create in the viewer?

Through my works, I aim to establish connections with a broad audience across cultures. I am grateful for these opportunities that allowed my works to be seen, felt, heard, and experienced by audiences of different backgrounds. Although some of my works are inspired by either my personal experience or historical events, I always re-situate them in broader socio-political and cultural-historical contexts that provide space for the audience to empathize with, connect with the works, and reflect upon these various systems of control. Ultimately, I aim to cultivate a sanctuary: a space of freedom and new possibilities.

Looking forward, are there new materials, contexts, or questions you're eager to explore in your practice? What feels unresolved or just beginning?

I am at a transitional stage in my practice, as I become more mature as a person and encounter new healing and liberation in myself. I am eager to explore ways of creating that can be more subtle, open yet complex: what will intensity look like in slowness and subtlety? A lot of my previous works situate right at the moments of tension and rupture, now I am exploring what comes afterwards - how to create works not as a mere reaction to pain, but a genuine evocation of hope and transformation.

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