Elaine K. Ng | Rockwell Collaborative Guest Artist

Building on a tradition of collaboration, The Rockwell Museum and Corning Museum of Glass are pleased to once again team up to host an emerging contemporary artist in Corning.

This year we welcome multidisciplinary artist Elaine K. Ng, who currently has two special installations on view at The Rockwell, including a site-specific installation as part of the ongoing Antigravity Project. This annual commission is coupled with a three-day guest appearance in the Corning Museum of Glass Amphitheater Hot Shop where she’ll work collaboratively with the gaffers to experiment and realize her designs in glass.

Elaine K. Ng's site-specific installation is now in place in The Rockwell’s rotunda entryway as a response to the architecture of that historic building. Ng’s Antigravity Project will be on view through February of 2022. The successful installation led to a continued partnership with Ng, and is now paired with a debut exhibition entitled Fingerprints of Place – Taiwan, on view through January 23. Both exhibitions explore human relationships to place through multimedia artworks, using materials like brick, concrete, wood, tile, thread and found objects unique to place, like crumpled receipts and native seed pods.

“Taiwan is my mother’s homeland, and my relationship with it is an evolving one. As a child, it was a parallel universe where there existed Asian equivalents of my Western upbringing, and as a teenager it felt like an amusement park we visited as tourists. In adulthood, the island has become a place where I can comfortably blend in as part of the majority culture, something impossible for me in the U.S. And yet, I am keenly aware that I do not belong there either. I am a ‘quasi-foreigner’ in Taiwan: I look like a local, but I am not; I speak Chinese, but have an accent that reveals my nationality. People are often unsure of how to interact with me, and I with them.

“At the root of these investigations are questions about origin and belonging – what, or who, belongs where, and who decides? Materials and objects carry stories that reveal our relationships to place through both personal experiences and collective knowledge – they reflect the complex and dynamic nature of how humans shape and are shaped by place.” 
-Elaine K. Ng

See Elaine K. Ng in the Amphitheater Hot Shop November 15–17, 10 am–4 pm.

Please note that the artist and gaffers will take lunch breaks each day, so times may vary.