Michelle Kwan, 2023
Oil on canvas
48 x 48 in

Image courtesy of the artist.
Image credit: © 2024 Christie’s Images Ltd.

More plastic, 2022
Oil on canvas
60 x 60 in

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Image credit: Chris Grunder

Pornhub Server, 2020
Acrylic on Canvas
96 x 72 in

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Image credit: Simon Vogel

Harlowe, 2023
Oil on linen
48 x 60 in

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Image credit: Chris Grunder

Grandpa, 2024
Oil and acrylic on canvas
60 x 72 in

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Image credit: Simon Vogel

Lucy Liu, 2022
Oil on canvas
Approx: 48 x 48 in

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Image credit: Chris Grunder

Titanic Stussy, 2023
Oil on canvas
72 x 60 in

Image courtesy of the artist.
Image credit: Chris Grunder

memory/

I grew up in Rockville, Maryland, very close to Washington, D.C., so I think that proximity made me more politicized. My high school friends, who grew up in a hippie enclave, were very left-leaning and progressive. I was in high school when the Iraq War began, and my high school friends and I would go to D.C. to protest. When Bush was elected, we went to anti-inauguration protests. We went to marches organized by the National Organization for Women, and it was interesting to see people who were passionate about discussing government policy.

Alongside the activism, I experienced a lot of segregation in school. I was in a math and science magnet program at Montgomery Blair High School, which separated magnet students, mostly East Asian and White, from the other students, who were mostly Black and Latino. It was awful to experience this segregation, especially since I didn’t have the language to understand it at the time. All of those factors made me politically conscious.

In terms of art, I took after-school painting classes at the Yellow Barn Studio. They were very intensive, and we did a lot of plein-air painting. Walt Bartman was a great teacher–I learned a lot from him.

The artist’s studio.

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line/

I’m completely addicted to the internet. I noticed this when I started time tracking, and I’d find that I was on my phone for six or more hours a day. Time tracking, journaling, and screenshotting became part of my “daily drawing practice.”

I collect folders and folders of memes. Memes are such a fast medium–I can maybe make 20 paintings a year, but I can look at 20 memes in a minute. I only paint memes I like, which usually revolve around topics like feminism, late capitalism, depression, mental health, Bitcoin, or gambling greed. The memes often have a dark, gallows-humor perspective. I feel like the only way to get through my day is to laugh at how completely absurd everything is.

I experience a lot of cognitive dissonance in my personal life, so I paint memes that capture that feeling. For example, I think about heavy topics like climate change, but I have to close my eyes when I buy a plane ticket or drive my car to work. I invest in the stock market, but how can I participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement when conventional retirement advice tells you to invest in an ETF?

Crypto memes are particularly interesting to me. It’s funny–I think it’s part of my feminist position to have the right to be a horrible crypto bro. I used to own crypto because I’m a degenerate gambler, and I feel that the meme space captures the collective unconscious of crypto bros. There’s the superficial, conscious level of cryptocurrencies, filled with long essays about U.S. monetary policy, financial transparency, and utopian visions. However, the memes are very sexist and filled with greed, hope, and addiction. That is the unconscious part of it. Our addictions to consumerism, gambling, and money are covering up the anxiety that comes from living in a society where our real needs aren’t being met. Let’s talk about the structures of our desire: Why do we feel the need to make a lot of money before we can feel safe or afford healthcare?

Is This A Bull Run?, 2024
Acrylic on canvas
48 x 48 in

Image courtesy of the artist.
Image credit: Arturo Sanchez

color/

I collect all of my memes into folders, many of which are very low-quality images. Hito Steyerl wrote a beautiful essay about lossy images on the internet called “In Defense of the Poor Image”, which I resonate with. When I paint, I try to match the “poor image” quality to the content of the meme. Whatever image has the fewest resources behind it, I want it to look the most pixelated, blurry, and deep-fried. If an image signifies wealth, capital, or resources, I try to paint it perfectly with a lot of labor. In order to find high-quality images, I usually have to reconstruct the memes through elaborate processes, like renting a movie to find the exact screen capture for the meme.

I paint very thinly in transparent glazes. I try to evoke the screen glow, so I have to somehow make paint pigments look like a screen. However, it’s impossible and I constantly fail, because screen and pigment colors are different, so the closest I can mimic a screen is by painting the canvas super white. The light bounces off the white gesso and goes through the transparent color layers, almost like stained glass.

I think that painting memes is completely absurd. It ties back to the absurdity of these times. I’m the worst inkjet printer. I’m performing failure. I’m so much slower than any available digital technology. Painting is on human time, not digital time. I think I'm constantly reminding myself–and pointing out–that I am human.

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Written and interviewed by Gabrielle Luu.

Gabrielle Luu is a writer based in Brooklyn, NY and the Editor-in-Chief of Civil Art.

Published April 30, 2025.

Image courtesy of the artist.

Christine Tien Wang

Christine Tien Wang (b. 1985) is an artist based in San Francisco, CA. She received a BFA from The Cooper Union in 2008 and an MFA in painting from UCLA in 2013.

Wang has had recent solo exhibitions at Night Gallery, Los Angeles; Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne, Berlin, and Munich; Magenta Plains, New York; PTT Space, Taipei, Taiwan; M. LeBlanc, Chicago, IL; and Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco. Her work has been included in group shows at the Frans-Hals Museum, Haarlem; Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, Busan, Korea; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York; M. LeBlanc Gallery, Chicago; Et Al, San Francisco; LAXART, Los Angeles; Foxy Production, New York; and African American Museum in Philadelphia, PA, among others. In 2020, Wang's solo presentation at The Armory Show was awarded the Pommery Prize; in 2019, she was a finalist for SFMoMA's SECA Art Award, and in 2017, she was nominated for the Paulo Cunha E Silva Art Prize. She is currently an Associate Professor in Painting and Drawing at California College of Art.