Yayuan Xue
About
Yayuan Xue is a visual artist and graphic designer based in Beijing. Her work focuses on objects as carriers of meanings and their participatory potential for audiences. She often uses subtle poetic gestures to offer complex emotional responses to experiences of contemporary life.
Education:
2012-2016, Visual Communication, Central Academy of Fine Arts, BA
2018-2020, Experimental Communication, Royal College of Art, MA
Exhibitions:
2020, New Genres Performance & Lecture: X+Y=Z, The Rotunda, London
2019, The Reader: p.3 - p.177, Tenderbooks, London
2017, PETA Bear Card for Freedom Art Exhibition, Yi Dian Space 798 Art Zone, Beijing
2016, The Start of A Long Journey, Imperial Ancestral Temple, Beijing
2016, I Will Be Your Eyes, Art+ Shanghai Gallery
2016, #100—Departure without Arriving was collected by CAFA Art Museum
2016, First Prize of Central Academy of Fine Arts Undergraduate Graduation Design
Contact
Degree Details
Statement
Yayuan's art practice focuses on the relationship between the individual and society, integrating her own experiences from the perspective of a third person. She is interested in the emotional connections between people and objects, creating participatory works that use a poetic logic. Notions of time and place are key ideas within her practice, seeing the works as a form for ‘materialised time’. Working across installation, photography, video, performance and sculpture, she chooses the most appropriate medium to communicate each idea.
It Rains
It Rains is an interactive installation and archive of rain sounds collected from different cities in the world. Each of the 24 glasses corresponds to one of these cities. When they are lifted by the audience, real-time sound of distant rain can be heard from the miniature speakers hidden beneath. Even though we cannot see these places, the sound of the rain can instantly transport us there contouring a mix of memories, nostalgia and imagination.
As the words say, "No one is an island", every drop of rain is worth being listened to.
Medium: speakers, glasses, wood, audio amplifier, AD converter, standalone mixer
Size: installation: variable / video: 2’07’’
Days after Days
In 2020, after a long period of isolation at home, I found that I gradually lost my sense of time. Day and night become indistinguishable and chaotic. I tried to find a way to regain an understanding of time. So I used this period to make these candles. The burning time of the candles is relatively fixed, 1 hour, 30 minutes etc. Let them be the ruler of time and give time shape. I transformed my time into these candles and sent them to friends by mail. In this way, re-establishing contact with them and helping them define their days and nights.
Medium: wax
Size: variable