Annie Hsiao-Ching Wang, Reframing Motherhood, BO Books, 2020

front cover

I'm posting below a review of this really fascinating and ambitious book from the website of Moon, an art book store in Taipei, Taiwan. This book is really a two-in-one, with the first half titled "The Mother as a Creator 2001-2020," and when you get to the end of the book you start the other half which is titled "My Son and I at the Same Height 2002-2020."

Artist Annie Hsiao-Ching Wang was born in Taipei, Taiwan. She received her practice-based PhD in Art from the University of Brighton in the UK. She is a professional artist and director of Ching Tien Art Space, and also an assistant professor at the Department of Arts and Design at the National Dong Hwa University. 

"The internationally recognized Taiwanese photographer, Annie Hsiao-Ching Wang, published her first photo book, Reframing Motherhood. With a series of photographs which heavily shows temporality and self-representation, the book comprises two art projects spanning over nearly two decades: The Mother as a Creator and My Son and I at the Same Height. These two projects have documented the photographer’s pregnancy and her son’s growth in the linear progression of time, turning every moment into a precious work that depicts the mother-son bond as they grow together, and writing a history of a mother in constant struggles of facing herself. 

The Mother as a Creator has been displayed as a Taiwanese travelling exhibition and been invited to many large international exhibitions. “In these photos, Wang asserts her active role in the making of another life, reframing motherhood as a grand creative endeavor,” says The New Yorker. “Probably the coolest mother and child photo in the world,” praised by The Chinese publication Portrait Magazine. This project also garners appreciation from BBC who say the project can “change and transcend the cliché of motherhood.” BuzzFeed News from the U.S. see the series of photographs captivating in their impressive and powerful stories and say that they “will challenge your view of the world."

In order to let her two seemingly incompatible identities—being an artist and a mom at the same time—coexist, Annie Wang redefines motherhood in a creative and innovative manner of photobiography as she flips stereotypical maternal images to counter the idea that a mom must sacrifice herself. With its distinctive photography style of mise en abyme, the series of photographs has spanned over two decades and taken in a form of the son trying to stand at the same height as his mom does. Recording the trajectory of aging in each photo taken, the series is seen as an unprecedented work in contemporary art. Collaborating transnationally, Reframing Motherhood is printed in Mandarin, English, and Korean. Its design of an accordion fold book is constructed as an exhibition which allows readers, whether they read it with only one hand or stretch it like an accordion, to travel through photos’ temporality.

Except for the photographer’s artworks and her artist statements, there are also background stories of every single photo written in the back of them. Readers can therefore understand what the artworks bring to them as well as the narrative that represents Annie Wang’s long-term work—both as an artist and as a mom."

39 double-sided pages, individually 10" x 7", when unfolded 22ft 9".

Wang's statement about the project with reflections on the photographs and the different circumstances in which they were taken. Note how she uses previous photographs in the series and layers them with more recent ones, setting up a situation in which they are in dialogue with each other.

cover for the 2nd book