Introduction

Yiyao Tang, born in Wenzhou, China, in 1996, now lives and works in New York and Shanghai. She received her BFA from Pratt Institute in 2018 and her MA from Harvard University in 2023. Tang’s practice coalesces mediums of intervention, projection, and installation to explore how social and political systems are embedded within images and objects. Using personal devices and inventive setups, she constructs and contests ideas on freedom, trauma, justice, otherness, and memory. Her setups behave twofold: both object and subject of her ideas, often leading to unpredictable outcomes themselves. More than just an archival account, Tang’s approach approximates archaeology in her ongoing process of uncovering evidence of our own contemporary artefacts, collective memories, and climactic traumas.

Her solo and two-person exhibitions include: The Currents We Carry, Hong Museum, Wenzhou, 2025; Faulting, Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, 2024; Mattering, theBlanc Gallery, New York, 2023; Precarious, Kirkland Gallery, Cambridge, 2022. She is the recipient of the Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation Visual Grant, New York, 2024; the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts Residency Program, Omaha, 2024; and the Swatch Art Peace Hotel Artist Residency, Shanghai, 2023.