From May 18 to September 8, 2024, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art presents “Miguel Ángel Payano Jr.: Woo-Woo,” the artist’s first institutional solo show. As an artist with a multicultural background and transcontinental experience, Payano imbues his paintings and “heavy collages” with cultural diversity, convergence, cross-pollination, and collapse. This exhibition encompasses works made throughout his career in China, portraying his epic journey of transcultural becoming. “Miguel Ángel Payano Jr.: Woo-Woo” is curated by UCCA Director Philip Tinari.

UCCA Center for Contemporary Art presents “Miguel Ángel Payano Jr.: Woo-Woo,” the artist’s first institutional solo show, from May 18 to September 8, 2024. As a Dominican-American from New York who was artistically trained at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Payano saturates his works with multicultural and multilingual concepts and explorations. This cross-cultural influence is manifested in his work as a keen sense of color, figuration, and composition. His work includes painting as well as what he calls “heavy collage,” where sculptural elements and readymade objects populate and protrude from canvases literally bursting with possible meanings. This exhibition encompasses works made throughout his twenty-year career in China, juxtaposing pieces from his early career with recent work created this year. The selected works display the progression of Payano’s artistic journey in China, beginning from him processing influences of a culture foreign to him to today, where his unique vision emerges fully formed. In both substance and form, this exhibition portrays an artist and his epic journey of transcultural becoming. “Miguel Ángel Payano Jr.: Woo-Woo” is curated by UCCA Director Philip Tinari.

The distinctive character of Miguel Ángel Payano Jr.’s work comes from his truly transcontinental footprint. He was born into an Afro-Carribean family and grew up in uptown New York City. He received his education in New England, and his artistic training in Beijing. He has been actively working between China and the US since the early-2000s. These experiences formed the foundation of his unique artistic language, full of linguistic cues and visual puns. Having lived in Beijing for nearly two decades and speaking fluent Mandarin with a Beijing accent, he proudly identifies himself as a “Sinophile,” and states that he “became an artist in China.” The exposure to traditional Chinese art forms, specifically Buddhist art in Dunhuang, Gongbi, ink and wash painting, and in particular, Chinese Opera face painting, inspired Payano to re-explore and reconstruct his identity both as an individual and an artist. However, this immersion in Chinese art has not compromised his instincts and aesthetics as a Dominican-American. Payano believes that it is precisely his cultural heritage that separates him from other artists in China. “My ways of thinking and making decisions, my tastes, and my attitudes are all inherent to my Afro-Caribbean background and my upbringing in uptown New York,” Payano remarked. The use of American cultural elements such as traces of graffiti elements featured in this exhibition has been consistent throughout his career.

The process of Payano’s transcultural development is intentionally displayed through the exhibition design. Housed mainly in the Central Gallery at UCCA Beijing, “Miguel Ángel Payano Jr.: Woo-Woo” is organized symmetrically, with his earlier work displayed next to the two entrance-exits on the sides, and the more recent, monumental paintings in the center. As the viewers enter the exhibition from either side and move toward the central space, they will see how Payano’s practice has developed under the influence of Chinese art across his different series.

When entering the exhibition from one side, the viewers will first encounter Red Line (2007), one of the earliest paintings from Payano. Around that time, Payano’s artistic experiments evolved around ink and wash paintings, starting from simplistic yet sentimental one-line drawings to more layered and complex paintings using different paints and materials. For example, Three Figures, One Stroke (2006) was created while he was an MFA student at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, where he initially restricted himself to drawing with one continuous line. This self-imposed constraint led to a long process of trial and error—some lines created desirable effects, while others were scrapped. To somehow “recycle” the lesser attempts, Payano started to cover up the original lines with paint, layer by layer, as if going to the other extreme. An example of this layering practice is Four Heads (2006), also on display in this exhibition.

Viewers who enter the exhibition from the other end will first see Coil (2006), followed by his early one-line drawings with oil paint layered over. These pieces allude to cursive scripts and graffiti that Payano grew up seeing in the heart of the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. After he graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts and moved into his own studio in Beijing, his oil paintings grew more logical conceptually and three-dimensional visually. He further developed his often-used motifs in his works, such as waves and simplified human figures. Untitled (2015) and Dancing Monk (2017) are some of the works created during his period of visual motif development. By covering up the original painting, it is as if Payano has collaged different timepoints onto one piece of canvas.

From his experiences across cultures, languages, and art mediums, Payano has come to realize that culture is formed by people sharing the same mindset and values, and concludes that the most powerful and influential vessel of culture is language. This revelation has brought much inspiration to his creative practice. For example, the peach-mouth motif that frequently shows up in Payano’s work represents the ideas of language and communication. After Payano was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2020, he started to rethink how he wanted to convey his ideas through his art. Although he previously embraced simplicity, he then decided that he should be open to more complex methods and presentations while he has the ability, and incorporated body limb elements cast from his own hands.

The “heavy collage” works shown in the central space reflect Payano’s revelations on the impact of language and his recent use of segmented human figure. These “heavy collages” were created in the past two or three years, presenting as three-dimensional paintings with sculptural components that protrude from the canvasses. The works show the artist’s process of assembling and layering of different images and materials, ultimately forming a portrait with a gestural element, as displayed in Thoughts Unsaid (2023) and The Artist (2023). In a temporal echo of this spatial logic, from June 22 to July 13, Vast Forest (2018), a major early painting that might be seen as the starting point for Payano’s “heavy collage,” will occupy the semi-public space of UCCA’s Open Gallery. On the weekends during this period, a program of contemporary dance commissioned by the artist will also take place.

In line with Payano’s multicultural background and passion for linguistics, the title for this exhibition “Woo-Woo” is a bilingual pun in Chinese and English. In English, it refers to “unconventional beliefs regarded as having little or no scientific basis, especially those relating to spirituality, mysticism, or alternative medicine.” This word is thought to have originated in the 1980s, and to mimic the imagined sounds of wailing ghosts. In Chinese, the two characters, which roughly mean “awakening/enlightenment (悟)” and “object/thing (物)” are not commonly seen together, but might refer to intelligent materials, or to sentient beasts. Payano sees this as a linguistic, and thus a cultural, point of convergence, abundance, cross-pollination, and collapse. The whimsical alchemy of cultures meeting is not just a subject for his paintings, but a deeply felt part of his life as a Black, Sinophone, Dominican-American artist.

Support and Sponsorship

Exclusive wall solutions support is provided by Dulux. UCCA also thanks the members of UCCA Foundation Council, International Circle, and Young Associates, as well as Lead Partner Aranya, Lead Art Book Partner DIOR, Presenting Partner Bloomberg, and Supporting Partners Barco, Dulux, Genelec, and Stey.

Public Programs

From June 22 to July 13, 2024, UCCA will present contemporary dances commissioned by the artist on four consecutive weekends. These performances will be themed around the large-scale work Vast Forest (mixed media on canvas, 2018) and other sculptures on display in the Open Gallery at UCCA Beijing, allowing the visitors to have a more immersive viewing experience. This series of works took inspiration from Nine Songs of the Mountain Ghosts, a poem written by the Chu poet Qu Yuan from the Warring States period. The works draw on Chinese mythology to celebrate life, insinuating complexities in art history and social metaphors, conveying the artist’s rich emotions and artistic concepts.

For the latest information on other conversations and special guided tours, please refer to announcements on UCCA’s official website, and our social media platforms such as the UCCA official WeChat account.

About the Artist

Miguel Ángel Payano Jr. (b. 1980, New York, lives and works in Beijing) is an Afro-Caribbean visual artist. After completing his dual B.A. degree in Chinese Language and Studio Art at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts (2003), Payano moved to Beijing, where he completed his M.F.A. in Oil Painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (2008). He also obtained an M.F.A. degree in Studio Art from Hunter College, The City University of New York (2020). Navigating between different languages and cultures, Payano became increasingly attuned to the importance of language and its application in our understanding of and relation to one another. Though his early career works are mainly paintings, in recent years the artist has expanded his practice to embrace sculptural and quasi-sculptural forms. His distinctive peach-mouths are joined with other images, textures, and found or assembled objects that form strange human-like portraits that fuse painting and sculpture. His previous solo exhibitions include “Out From” (Charles Moffett, New York, USA, 2023); “Sojourn Summits” (Galleria Poggiali, Milan, Italy, 2022); and “Elusive Nature” (Make Room, Los Angeles, USA, 2021). He has also participated in group shows including “This Basic Asymmetry” (Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, California, USA, 2022) and “Ad-Diriyah Biennale: Feeling the Stones” (Saudi Arabia, 2021).