Joy Wai's timeless photographs capture fleeting moments in a rapidly changing world.  Behind the lens, Wai, focusing primarily on her former home of Beijing, coolly observes the advancing society and ingrained traditions that proliferate across the vast expanse of China. Against the terminally gray skies of Beijing, reds, oranges, greens, and yellows resonate within each image. By juxtaposing old cultural signifiers against new symbols of modernity and progress, Wai not only creates a historical document of a nation in transition, but composes a love song to the long-held traditions of China's past and present.  In doing so, Joy Wai hopes to express the cultural shifts and struggles she faces as an individual, and more importantly those which we face as a global society.

Joy Wai began documenting China's dramatic changes in 2005 and the resulting photographs were exhibited in her one-woman show, Faces and Stages: My Journey in China at the Asian Cultural Center.  The artist now lives and works in Manhattan.