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Allen Wang – Held in Silt Exhibition
Allen Wang – Held in Silt Exhibition (On display January 2nd–30th)
EventThem Studios presents Held in Silt, a new exhibit of charcoal work by Allen Wang, a multi-disciplinary artist and student at Tufts University and their School of Museum of Fine Arts, on display from January 2nd–30th.
Allen was born in a small village on the Loess Plateau in Northwestern China, his work rooted in its landscapes and people, “a place carved by wind, silt, and time.” His artistic journey began at an early age, filling his childhood home with doodles and gaining inspiration from his village in the Loess Plateau and later the cityscapes of Shanghai. Currently, Allen attends Tufts University studying Computer Science and Fine Arts at their School of the Museum of Fine Arts. In totality, his work reflects different types of stillness from the people and places he has seen through his childhood and in his current home in New England. His work invites viewers to sit with the ambiguity of the stillness and “feel their way through the in-between.”
We welcome you to stop by EventThem Studios during our gallery hours to view his incredible work (January 2nd–30th), and invite you to attend the Opening Reception on Saturday, January 17th from 6:00–9:00 PM to meet Allen and learn more about his work.
Location: EventThem Studios, 344 Salem St, Medford, MA
Gallery Hours: Mon & Tues 10–6, Wed & Thur 10–8, Fri & Sat 10–2
Artist Statement:
I spent much of my childhood in art studios, starting off as not a deliberate pursuit but as a consequence of circumstance. Due to my family’s financial precarity, these studios functioned as after-school environments while my parents worked. As my family relocated frequently, the studio emerged as a consistent presence in my life, a space defined by the scratch of pencils on paper, the smell of paint, and the disciplined rhythm of sustained making. Over time, these environments shaped my understanding of labor, focus, and creative practice. My parents often remark that the most fortunate outcome of this was my eventual commitment to art; however, in retrospect, it is clear that prolonged exposure to these spaces laid the groundwork for my artistic development long before that commitment was consciously formed.
By the time I reached college, I was still making work that was visually successful, yet detached from myself. I did not feel urgency in what I made, nor did I feel compelled to locate myself within the work. During my BFA, I began to question not only how I was making art, but more importantly, why. I came to realize that in order to make work that was truly my own, I needed to return to who I was, or who I had been. This meant returning to a place I had long refused to draw or ever talk about, because I never saw its value. I began to confront memory, distance, and a landscape I had carried with me for years, one that had long been misunderstood.
At the beginning of the past year, this process led to the start of the Yellow River series, a body of work that explores place, memory, and identity, rooted in the Loess Plateau of northwestern China, the landscape that shaped my earliest memories. The land there is soft and unstable, constantly collapsing under erosion. Hills are carved into ravines; cliffs slip downward year after year; villages quietly disappear. It was a place where people once died waiting when the rain did not come. When I asked why they never left, the older villagers laughed, a small, quiet laugh, as if the answer was obvious to everyone but me.
Through layered, textured mark-making and an earthy, weathered palette, I recall places I have not returned to since childhood. The process has become a way to return, rediscover, and reconnect. These landscapes hold both remembrance and loss, reshaped by time, distance, and imagination. Through my work, I ask what it means to carry the stories of a land that continues to change, one I can no longer touch.
This body of work is grounded in my material relationship with charcoal. At first, the medium felt difficult to handle. Unlike brushes or pens that have almost-full control, charcoal is dusty, unstable, and deeply unpredictable. Each stick carries its own texture and resistance. I struggled to hold it properly, to let the sharp edge cut through the paper, to align marks, maintain rhythm, and control value. Gradually, I stopped trying to control the material and learned to respond to it. I began grinding charcoal sticks into powder and applying it with sponges, brushes, and other tools. When I dip the sponge into the charcoal powder, it instantly gives back countless variations. Each gesture responds to minute conditions–pressure, angle, moisture, even the heat of my palm, the way water responds to small shifts. These conditions determine how the charcoal clings, spreads, or collapses on paper. Over time, I learned to build surfaces through layering, pushing dense blacks against whites, building dense, shifting surfaces that feel dynamic and almost overwhelming.
Visitors to my studio often hesitate to come too close, as if the work itself might stain them. In those moments, I realize I have created my own Loess Plateau, one that carries the same sense of unease–feared, misread, and kept at a distance. At the same time, I hold an opposite fear: that I might accidentally brush against the work and disturb the dust clinging to its surface. I sometimes hold my breath as I move through the space, afraid of harming the work simply by being near it. The pieces are delicate, yet alive. Even when hanging still, they resist stillness. They hold pressure rather than release it–powerful, but easily shifted.Through this making, I have come to understand charcoal not only as a material, but as a way of understanding land shaped by force, restraint, and endurance.
To locate textures reminiscent of the Loess Plateau, I traveled across New England, studying waterways, reservoirs, dams, and riverbeds. Being in these places allowed memory and distance to filter through my lived experience. The sites farthest from cities, where human presence felt minimal, were often the most difficult to reach. Some required climbing click stones besides waterfalls; others meant pushing through the deepest forest trails. In contrast, some sites closer to cities had already started drying out, even during rainfall, their surfaces unchanged and still. At the same time, violent surges pulsed through hidden urban sewage channels.
Confronting these contradictions became part of the work itself. I placed my body into these landscapes to experience the force of water firsthand, allowing moments of pressure and release to translate into dense, layered charcoal surfaces. These drawings hold tension between containment and rupture, abundance and absence, reflecting not only my memory of the Loess Plateau but also the fragile conditions of today’s ecologies as urbanization and environmental strain continue to intensify.
In some of the most isolated locations, I encountered the raw force of water, echoing distant memories of the Xiaolangdi Dam’s thunderous release. Along riverbeds, rocks stood scarred yet upright, holding their shape after centuries of pressure. Their surfaces were rigid and fractured, almost skeletal. Rather than collapse, I felt endurance. This encounter led to Held in Pressure, a work rooted in the texture of rock. Within these fractured surfaces, I see the Loess Plateau–layers of erosion, traces of history, and the quiet accumulation of change. The drawing holds the weight of generations: people leaving, people waiting, and a land shaped slowly by pressure rather than force. Like the eroded cliffs of the Loess Plateau, these forms carry the memory of pressure and endurance.
There is a Chinese saying: “The Yellow River comes from the sky, surging to the sea, never returning.” Through this body of work, I reconnect with the river not only as landscape, but as inheritance. While many young people leave the village in search of different lives, the land remains, bearing generations of change and pressure. Like the Loess Plateau itself, it does not leave or resist erosion. It waits, continues to give, and teaches me how to endure.
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