By the Rhine, Now It’s America! extends the recurring structure of patriarchy from an East Asian context into the Western world. By placing the Rhine—a symbol of European history and culture—alongside “America” as an ideological projection, the work traces a shift of power and meaning across geographies. Like the figure of Antigone echoing through different cultures, the emotional and structural pressures experienced by younger generations reappear in varied but familiar forms.
Rather than framing a simple opposition between East and West, the work attends to their underlying similarities. Beneath the language of tradition or freedom, longstanding patriarchal logics continue to shape institutions and everyday life. Through its displacement of place and identity, the piece makes these persistent structures visible, suggesting that different cultural landscapes often carry the same historical weight.

Stephen Yao (b. 1995, graduated from the University of Southern California with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting, currently working and residing in North America) explores the predicament of individual existence within the overlapping contexts of East Asian society and post-historical discourse through his painting practice. This examination traverses the realms of history and nature, politics and faith, and paternal and maternal lineages. Influenced by German Romanticism and post-war European painting traditions, his works explore the individual's spiritual agitation in opposition to the sublime within this era of uncertainty.