Whitney Museum Unveils Frank WANG Yefeng’s New Digital Artwork Exploring Identity, Cultural Displacement, and Anti-Asian Stereotypes

The Whitney Museum of American Art has officially launched The Levitating Perils #2, a groundbreaking digital artwork by Frank WANG Yefeng, now live on whitney.org as part of the Museum’s prestigious artport program. The commission expands the Whitney’s commitment to supporting innovative Internet art while introducing a powerful new body of work that examines identity, cultural displacement, and the history of anti-Asian representation in Western media.  

Designed for artport’s On the Hour series, the project activates across the Museum’s website every full hour, presenting a 30-second net-art intervention that disrupts the traditional online museum experience. This digital “takeover,” presented repeatedly throughout the day, mirrors the rhythms of virtual life and positions the museum’s website as both canvas and medium.  

A Digital Artwork Rooted in History, Myth, and Identity

Comprising five original animations, The Levitating Perils #2 extends Yefeng’s long-standing interest in transnational identity and the sense of “in-betweenness” experienced by individuals navigating nomadic cultural realities. Drawing from early twentieth-century political cartoons and newspaper illustrations, Yefeng reimagines imagery historically used to portray Asians as threatening or foreign, reframing xenophobic propaganda into speculative visual storytelling.  

At the center of the work is a floating red dragon, a direct reference to the infamous illustration The Ogre of the Orient(1904–05). The creature—sometimes whimsical, sometimes unsettling—is encircled by handwritten messages echoing distorted phrases historically deployed to promote fear and anti-Asian sentiment. A human head bearing Yefeng’s likeness appears throughout the sequences, its tentacled horns tugged by invisible forces that symbolize the instability of transnational existence. Together, these elements form a digital space where myth, memory, and migration intertwine.  

Curatorial Insight

“Frank’s work succeeds in engaging with cultural bias and the challenges of a transnational life in a playful way that still remains truthful to complicated histories,” said Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum. “His whimsical and uncanny characters create a space in which myth and history dissolve and open up paths for transformation.”  

Paul organized the commission as part of On the Hour, a series dedicated to reimagining the museum’s website as an evolving, interactive digital environment. Visitors can experience the project simply by being on whitney.org on any full hour of the day.  

About the Artist: Frank WANG Yefeng

Born in 1984 and working between New York City and Shanghai, Yefeng is a transdisciplinary artist whose practice spans video installation, 3D animation, sculpture, painting, drawing, and writing. His work frequently centers on the psychological tensions and creative possibilities embedded in cultural hybridity. He has been featured internationally in the BRIC Biennial, OCAT Biennial, CCS Bard Hessel Museum, ISCP, Smack Mellon, Gasworks London, Jeju Museum, and others. His residencies and fellowships include K11 Art Foundation x ArtReview, Asia Art Archive in America, MacDowell, Pratt Institute, and the High Line Art & CHANEL Culture Fund’s High Line Originals.