Walking to Taipei, 2010 - 2022
Mixed media on Dura-Lar, rice paper, acrylic scroll ends, wooden scroll box
20'' x 20'
In 2010, unable to afford airfare from her Boston home to visit her sick grandmother in Taiwan, artist Yu-Wen Wu, in a moment of Herzog-like madness and faith, Googled instructions for walking to Taipei. To her shock, a set of 2,052 directions appeared. She printed out the 95-page document. In a mystery that could only exist in the algorithm, when she returned to print out a duplicate document, the instructions were gone and never came up again. The universe had granted this navigational map from a vanishing world just once.
Read more about this work:
Bloomberg: “Walking to Taipei Through A Google Maps Glitch”, Marie Patino, May 8, 2024
Artnews: “Yu-Wen Wu Asked Google How to Walk From Boston to Taipei. She Spent the Next 10 Years Turning the Directions Into an Incredible Artwork”, by Sarah Cascone May 6, 2022
New York Magazine (Vulture): “The Best New York Art Shows of 2022”by Jerry Saltz, December 2022
New York Magazine: “Yu-Wen Wu’s Algorithmic Odyssey Around the World”, by Jerry Saltz, June 2022