Tea Room
Multidisciplinary Art Project
ARTIST STATEMENT
“Humanity has met a teacup.”
Weaving a variety of mediums together–including sound installation, sculpture, happening, podcast, poetry, and performance—Wang strives to capture the multi-sensory, healing experience of tea-drinking. Tea Room serves as an embodiment of the pre and post colonial history, aesthetic, philosophy, and identity politics of tea and tea-drinking. Through the investigation of navigating one’s personal identity, he uses this interdisciplinary project to address the evolution from ethnic minority to global citizen in intercultural dialogues.
01 Poetry Works
Songs of Seven Cups
诗歌原文（节选）
《走笔谢孟谏议寄新茶》（七碗茶诗）
唐·卢仝
一碗喉吻润，二碗破孤闷。
三碗搜枯肠，唯有文字五千卷。
四碗发轻汗，平生不平事尽向毛孔散。
五碗肌骨清，六碗通仙灵。
七碗吃不得也，唯觉两腋习习清风生。
Original Poem (Excerpt)
"Songs of Seven Cups" / "Seven Cups of Tea"
by Lu Tong from Tang Dynasty
The first cup of tea kisses the throat;
The second cup shatters the wall of solitude;
The third cup explores the dry stream and opens up the poetry of my soul;
The fourth cup evaporates with the rest of world;
The fifth cup penetrates and sharpens the body;
The sixth cup calling;
And the seventh cup slowly sits steaming; the wind under my skin.
(English Translation by Haotian Wang)
02 Audio Works
Based on a Tang-Dynasty Chinese poem by Lu Tong: “Songs of Seven Cups,” I was inspired to create seven sound pieces. The titles are named after each cup of tea and the embodied meanings in each stanza. Combining found sounds, field recordings, and ambient textures, I navigate how tea can bring the serenity of mind and harmony with surroundings as well as the intersection of poetry and tea rituals.
Following the seven-cup narrative in "Songs of Seven Cups," I created seven additional podcast clips in Part II. I decided to expand my tea project through the lens of cross-cultural communication and globalization. As a global citizen traveling across different continents, I made a series of tea podcasts as an introspection on identity conflicts, immigration, and cultural assimilation, featuring strangers and friends from New York City. The podcast’s narrative form allows me to capture an authentic glimpse of how people navigate their identities in the globalized world. To explore the complexity of translation, I blended the dialogue in Chinese and English together and used different mediums to cross the language barrier.
03 Visual Works
Poems on a Tea Cake
Inspired by The Classic of Tea (Cha Jing), the earliest document about tea, this set of graphic design was originally inspired by the form of visual poetry, specifically ancient Chinese reversible poems. This collection serves as an invitation to tea as a unique “nature-culture”. I unpacked 9 different types of tea from tea bags, tea powder packets, and tea brick, took pictures, then designed visual poetry on top of each. People are supposed to guess what type of tea for each picture. Meantime, I encourage the audience to reflect upon the the cost and monopolization of consumption, the materiality and mediation of tea.
The namings of each image and tea podcasts are both inspired by The Classic of Tea (茶经), the earliest and most famous documentation of tea written by Lu Yu. According to Chinese-English Tea Studies Terminology, there are three scrolls and ten chapters about tea: “一之源 Origin, 二之具 Tools, 三之造 Making, 四之器 Utensil, 五之煮Boiling, 六之飲 Drinking, 七之事 History, 八之出 Growing Regions, 九之略 Simplify, and 十之图 Pictorialize” (Credit to Lu-Yu Tea Culture Institute).
CHATEE
CHATEE is a computer-generated word search game, which I showcased the word "tea" in 12 different languages.
When doing research on the language of tea, I found the word "tea" either starts with the letter "C" or "T." I found that the development of the vocabulary in different countries is linked with how tea originally arrived, for whom/where the country received the tea from. Another theory indicates that "T" means received by sea while "C" means by land.
If the tea is received from China, it will start with C (as in Mandarin tea is pronounced as Cha). And as a result, we get Chai (India) and Cay (Turkey). On the other hand, for most European languages, tea comes from the UK. Therefore, the word "tea" evolved into tee (German), thee (Dutch), and té (Spanish). The project aims to inspire our idea about diaspora and cultural exchange.
04 Performance Works
I've hosted 3 series of performances in 2023-2024:
(1) Immersive Sonic Meditation @Gaia Nomaya, New York City
Guided meditation session based on Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening teachings + Music performance + Poetry reading
(2) Tea: Story of the Leaves @Wirtz Theater, Evanston
A 75-minute performance exploring immersive music performance (Live Ambient Set) + Tea ceremony.
(3) Tea: Story of the Leaves @Elastic Arts, Chicago
As part of the Chicago Laboratory for Electro-Acoustic Theatre (CLEAT) Listening and Performance Series.
A 75-minute performance, 16-Channel with 2 Live Band Ambient Sets + Tea ceremony
The work aims to create an embodied experience that creates an open, communal space for deep listening, meditation, and healing.
05 Artistic Collaborations
Part I.
Special Ceramics Teacups designed by Xiao Qin
Xiao designed and made these ceramic teacups in the shape of leaves. All the teacups are hand-made. The teacups are divided into three shapes, each with a different glaze on the inner wall. Xiao used black stoneware as the main body of the teacup. The outer wall retains the unglazed texture, and the leaf pattern is hand-painted with transparent glossy glaze, which echoes the theme "Story of the Leaves."