For multidisciplinary artist Oscar Wang, what he’d like spectators to recollect from Tuesday’s show of Chinese sportswear giant Li-Ning on the Pompidou Center isn’t just the set — it’s the philosophy behind it.

Titled “My-Verse” in English, the concept is without delay a reference to the metaverse and a Chinese proverb that translates to “I even have my very own space, I even have my very own world.” And that’s precisely the type of double-entendre, bicultural wordplay that Wang enjoys.

The set will feature a series of doorways in styles starting from ancient and stately to modern and industrial, with shapes alluding to traditional Chinese architecture. Each can be a “portals blurring the physical and digital — through time and space, from Beijing to Paris,” a voyage that he hopes may even resonate with Paris’ international audience.

But helping Eastern and Western sensibilities find common grounds for creation has been at the middle of much of the profession of 33-year-old Wang, who’s the son of renowned Taiwanese actress and director Silvia Chang.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Wang went on to check at London’s Chelsea College of Art, a world upbringing that required him to easily shuttle between each cultures, collecting what he saw as connecting points with a magpie-like sensibility.

Next he headed to Shanghai, where he opened Open Work Studio, a multidisciplinary creative practice through which emerged projects comparable to dressing Airpods for Stella McCartney in an animal-inspired design, interpreting Fendi’s Peekaboo for the bag’s 10^th anniversary, or giving life to the Fendidi family, a quartet of panda figures created for the Roman fashion house in 2018 and delivered to life in China online and offline.

Throughout the pandemic, he also launched Earthling Collective, a budding fashion label during which he desires to explore the commonalities between people and cultures. And if that wasn’t enough, he has made inroads in hospitality with popular Shanghai destinations comparable to Loam Yard, a café and bar situated near the town’s West Bund contemporary art center.

Most recently, Wang unveiled during Art Basel Hong Kong the “Dōngxī Teapot,” a collaboration with American artist Daniel Arsham that saw the pair produce a classical Chinese teapot in rare Yixing clay, adorned with a blueprint-inspired design that describes the several elements and dimensions involved in its creation. Here, too, Wang’s playing on words, as Dōngxī means each “East-West” and “object.”

“I wanted this idea to be delivered to life in order that [non-Chinese] people can understand Chinese culture in a cool way,” said the Shanghai-based artist. “Tea is something that you could enjoy, loosen up with and it’s also trans-cultural.”

But Li-Ning’s Paris show marks the primary time Wang is working on a world project with the China-based label.

“It’s been interesting because I’ve been doing so many projects for the West from the East, so working on a project with an enormous [Chinese] company with my concept was an interesting play to see the way it differentiates,” he said. “There are some interesting concepts I’d never thought of but putting them in perspective gave me a greater understanding of what youth likes, what youth wants.”

He credits his international upbringing with making him “easily adaptable to ideas” rooted in Eastern in addition to Western culture, making his role akin to that of a translator by helping teams on each ends of the cultural spectrum understand one another.

“It’s interesting to see when the Western team is having a tough time understanding the Chinese aspect while I totally get what they’re saying, and vice versa,” he said. “Having the ability to switch [from one frame of reference to the other] like channels is sort of crucial in in modern-day creativity, since the quicker you may adapt and give you ‘strange’ concepts, the more creative you grow to be.”