Maggie Wong (b. 1988, Oakland, CA) makes art, writes about art, writes art, reads art, shares art, mentors artists, and is mentored by artists.

In a letter to an inquiring art appreciation student, curator and museum educator Katharine Kuh emphatically claimed, “I don’t think there is such a thing as appreciating art; there is only loving it.” As an artist and educator, I stand by Kuh’s enthusiasm but am drawn to ask: how can we learn from love? Rather than defining love, I accept it as a relational phenomenon that draws me to objects and ideas. With an eye toward post-minimalism, I create social and sculptural forms that play with the affective edges of objects and texts. I treat research like a love language that unpacks personal encounters with structures that define difference. I seek out where love undergirds study and touches the political and ask how sensation transforms how one inherits and interprets chunks of knowledge that get thrust through time. While individual works demonstrate different characteristics of materiality and formal outcomes, you’ll find an enthusiastic and amorous logic across my entire practice.  

Enthusiastic logic “drives us to fill the spaces that we know can never be filled.” – Johanna Burton