A person with long black hair, standing in front of two paintings whilst holding a cello.

Programme:

Art - PhD/MPhil

Start date:

Sep-22

Mode of study:

Full time

Biography

Wushuang Tong is an interdisciplinary artist and cellist. She holds an MRes in Arts & Humanities from the Royal College of Art and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Her undergraduate studies encompassed Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Literature at Wuhan University. Beyond painting, her practice spans ceramics, sculpture, moving image, photography, and poetry.

Alongside her research, Wushuang integrates diverse disciplines into her work. She received the Our Minds Fellowship from Edinburgh Neuroscience and participated in Fusion: Art Meets Science, a collaboration between the Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain and the Patrick Wild Centre. She showcased her biological ceramics at the MRC Doctoral Training Partnership Symposium at King’s College London and worked as a character illustrator for the experimental play Blossoms of Her Selves, performed at Stage@Leeds. She also exhibited at the Great Exhibition Road Festival and the Science Museum, London, and was a visiting speaker at the King’s Engaged Researcher Network (KERN).

Believing in art’s transformative power, Wushuang actively contributes to community projects. She participated in Art for Polar at Eco Young Harvard Innovation Labs, a program dedicated to polar conservation. As a collaborative artist with the Sino-USA Next Generation Foundation Atlanta, her paintings were auctioned to raise funds assisting children in underdeveloped regions to complete their education. She also voluntarily designed a public sculpture for a school in her hometown, Sichuan.

Recently, Wushuang held a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chengdu. Her works and cello performances have been featured in venues including BBA Gallery Berlin, San Mei Gallery London, SVA Chelsea Gallery, Starta Arta NYC, the International Center for the Arts Monte Castello di Vibio, Sullivan Gallery Chicago, University of Chicago, Northwestern University, China Engraving Art Museum, etc. Her paintings are in private collections worldwide.

Research interests

  • The translation between classical music and painting.
  • The visual representation of music across various mediums.
  • Collaborations between art and science.
  • Bio-sculpture and bio-ceramics.
  • The narrative influence of poetry on painting.

Teaching

Teaching Assistant for the Sculpture Foundation course with undergraduate students.
Tutor for the Art in Community course with graduate students.

Research

Wushuang's research explores the interplay between classical music and painting. She examines how the disciplined structures, aesthetics, and embodied aspects of classical music performance—particularly as a cellist—can inform and reshape the creative process of painting.