Wen, Yuan is a Vancouver-based artist whose work explores the open potential of material, where transformation is never fixed but always unfolding. Drawing on traditional materials such as Xuan paper, bamboo, and hemp, Wen engages craft-based knowledge as both a practice of making and a way of thinking. Ink rubbings, hand-bound fibres, and structural remnants carry the memory of labour and tradition, while being reconfigured into contemporary installations that shift between utility, image, and resonance.
Guided by Chan philosophy, Wen approaches art-making as a meditation on impermanence and in the moment of presence. Materials are not static but transitional, embodying traces of time, touch, and transformation. By foregrounding fragments, shadows, and vibrations, her work dwells in the threshold between anything and something — the moment before form, where material and thought remain fluid and full of possibility.