In The Mother as a Creator, Annie Hsiao-Ching Wang has photographed herself and her son over the course of more than 20 years, following the pattern that each photograph is incorporated into the next. Through this mise-en-abyme, in which the present recontextualises the past, Hsiao-Ching Wang records their life together and separately –her graduation, her son’s broken leg, travelling and moving house– and allows us to sense how time transforms the mother-child relationship, with its moments of complicity, distancing and reconciliation.

The title, The Mother as a Creator, alludes to the paradox that an act as creative as motherhood generally has the effect of reducing the creative activity of women artists. Unlike the famous The Brown Sisters, in which Nicholas Nixon portrayed his wife and sisters-in-law annually for four decades, this series highlights the leaps in time that reflect life’s tribulations: photos lost during a move, a years-long interruption due to overwork or the time when her teenage son refused to collaborate. Rather than idealizing a uniform, uneventful past, the photographer celebrates the experiences that give meaning to the passage of time.

Born in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1972. Annie earned a PhD in Art from the University of Brighton in the UK. She is the founder of Ching Tien Art Space and also serves as an assistant professor at National Dong Hwa University. In recent years, Annie has been invited to international photography festivals and major art exhibitions in various countries, including the Festival Images Vevey in Switzerland, the International Festival of Photography in Australia, “SHERO” at the Tainan Art Museum in Taiwan, the Daegu Photo Biennale in Korea, AIPAD in New York, and Paris Photo in Paris. Moreover, her works are part of the collections of several prestigious institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Getty Center in Los Angeles; the George Eastman Museum in Rochester; the Nelson-AtkinsMuseum of Art in Kansas City; the Harry Ransom Center in Austin; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; and the Tainan Museum of Art in Taiwan, among others.

Annie Hsiao-Ching Wang (Taiwan, 1972)
母親如同創造者 (The Mother as a Creator)

2025 Edition
Outdoor installation
Venue: Zabala School