The U.S. Department of State's Office of Art in Embassies (AIE) has announced the list of artists to be honored with the US State Department Medal of Arts, and among them is Taiwanese artist Suling Wang (王淑鈴). The award ceremony will take place on Sept. 13 at the White House in Washington, D.C., and the awards will be personally presented by the First Lady of the United States, Jill Biden.

According to the press release, the Medal of Arts award was created by Art in Embassies, in partnership with the Secretary of State, in 2012 to formally acknowledge artists who have played an exemplary role in advancing the U.S. Department of State’s mission to promote cultural diplomacy. Their achievements represent those of thousands of artists who make art diplomacy possible at U.S. embassies around the world. Art serves as a bridge with other nations, encourages discussion and expression, and highlights the communal experience of people from countries, cultures, and backgrounds worldwide.

Born in Taichung City, Wang is known primarily for her large-scale, abstract paintings that explore the artist’s sense of location and distance between Eastern and Western cultures. She completed her Bachelor of Arts degree at Central Saint Martins in London in 1997 and then received her Master of Arts degree from the Royal College of Art in 1999.

After living and working abroad, Wang returned to her childhood home in a small rural village outside of Taichung and now spends most of her time there. She was a 2019 Artist x Artist Gala Honoree of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. Art in Embassies commissioned Wang to realize one of her largest oil and acrylic on canvas paintings to date for the American Institute in Taipei, Taiwan. “The Singing River 2” is over seven feet high and almost thirty feet long; its motifs are influenced by the landscape of her childhood in Taiwan, the changes that followed, and the cross-cultural dialogue between the histories of Eastern and Western art.

(Image from the website of Art in Embassies)