Xiaojing Yan (simplified Chinese 闫晓静, last name is Yan) is a contemporary Chinese Canadian artist known for her work in sculpture, installation and public art.[1]
Xiaojing Yan (born 1978, Jiangsu, China) received her Bachelors in Decorative Art from Nanjing Arts Institute in 2000.[citation needed] In 2004 she received degree from George Brown College and in 2007 she received an MFA degree in sculpture from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, United States.[2]
As an artist migrating from China to North America, both her identity and her work pass through the complex filters of different countries, languages, and cultural expectations.[3] Yan has exhibited at Maison Hermès Shanghai,[4] Suzhou Museum, Royal Ontario Museum,[5] Varley Art Gallery, TRUCK Contemporary Art, Calgary; Plug In Contemporary, Winnipeg; Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey; Varley Art Gallery in Markham.[1] Her work was featured at Toronto International Art Fair in 2012 and 2014.
Yan was commissioned by Hermès to design the 2019 summer window [6] for Maison Hermès in Shanghai accompanied by her solo exhibition in the Maison.[7] In 2021, Hermès commissioned her to create “Emergence” a permanent installation for the new store in Shanghai.[8]
"Yan's poetic explorations delve into the meaning of spirituality and the transformation of self. Yan draws on personal experience from her earlier life in China and eventual immigration to Canada in reimagining these traditional visual languages through a contemporary perspective."[9] In her 2018 exhibition In Suspended Silence, at the Richmond Art Gallery in British Columbia, Canada, "Yan combined two bodies of work that derive from classical Chinese ink wash painting and portrait sculpture."[9] "It is through the use of traditional Chinese materials and art-historical references that her work navigates a transformative space between culture and identity. "[10]
“Lingzhi Girl” #10, one of Yan's iconic works, made the cover of Art in America March 2022 issue.[11] This series of evocative figures of human and animal forms inspired by Chinese mythology and folktales. Yan cultivate lingzhi mushroom sculptures form the mould she created through a painstaking, suspenseful experiment by mixing the mushroom spores and woodchips together and incubating the blend in a specially constructed mold. Carefully controlling humidity, temperature and light, a lingzhi mycelium starts to grow and once it has assumed the proper shape and a viable state, the mold is removed. The fragile sculpture, with its mushroom surface, continues to evolve. No longer controlled by the artist but assuming a form determined by nature, it might be considered a collaboration classified as a combination of art, science experiment, and natural process. “In this series, Yan's investigations, in which metaphoric and physical worlds quietly interpenetrate each other, delve into the meaning of spirituality and metamorphoses, as well as raising other questions about being and becoming through the lens of art and nature, art and science, art and culture and their interconnections. ” - Lilly Wei[12]
Yan is the recipient of the 2014 Outstanding Young Alumni Award from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, the 2013 Mandarin Profile Awards of Fairchild TV and The Chalmers Arts Fellowship.[46]
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