Artist Statement
My work explores the balance between dualities—restraint and freedom, memory and loss, dislocation and belonging—shaped by my experience of migration between China and the United States. I approach emotion as a spatial and temporal condition that unfolds through cultural memory, physical form, and lived experience. Rather than illustrating specific emotions, I investigate states that exist before language, creating ceramic sculptures, wall pieces, and installations that give physical presence to feelings that resist definition. Using hand-building, slip casting, and image transfer with porcelain paper clay, I treat clay as a material that records touch, pressure, and traces of time. Organic forms reminiscent of coral, sediment, and bodily matter coexist with geometric structures, expressing tensions between growth and control, vulnerability and stability. Through these relationships, I create environments where emotion is both personal and collective, abstract yet embodied, shaped by memory, displacement, and survival.
My practice is informed by Daoist and Confucian philosophies, particularly ideas of balance, interconnectedness, and cyclical transformation. Rather than offering fixed meanings, the work invites contemplation and reflection. Like the natural world, emotions are constantly changing and evolving. Through ambiguity, fragility, and accumulation, I create spaces for empathy and introspection, where viewers can encounter the shifting relationships between memory, identity, and belonging. By bringing together organic and constructed forms, personal experience and collective histories, my work reflects on how emotions persist, transform, and connect us across time, place, and culture.
Biography
Renqian Yang is an artist and Associate Professor of Ceramics at the SUNY Oswego in New York. She received her B.F.A. in Ceramics from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2009 and her M.F.A. from Syracuse University in 2014. Yang’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States and internationally, including in the United Kingdom, China, South Korea, and Japan. In 2024, her work was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum for its permanent collection.
Yang is currently featured in the exhibition Dimensions: Contemporary Chinese Studio Crafts at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, London. Her recent exhibitions include the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art (2025), the Shiwan Ceramics Museum (2023), the Toyama Prefectural Museum of Art and Design (2021), and the National Assembly of South Korea (2023). She has an upcoming solo exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York. Yang has been awarded artist residencies at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Craigardan, Jingdezhen International Studio, and STARworks Ceramics. She was also featured in the 15th Anniversary Edition of Ceramics Now Magazine.
SELECTED NEWS
展览后续《多元宇宙的绘图》Exhibition review Mapping the Multiverse, by Iconic Ceramic, 2024
“Failing Is a Part of Growth, New York-based Artist Renqian Yang”. LiTang, OCTOBER 20, 2022
“Meet Renqian Yang | Artist & Educator.” Shoutout LA, 1 August 2022
Renqian Yang: Sounds of The Ephemeral, 2021, Ceramics Now, March 7th, 2022
Hai, Liang. “A Journey Through Antithesis: On Renqian Yang’s Ceramic Works.” Tussle, 3 May 2021
“Renqian Yang: Sounds of the Ephemeral”. Asia Art Archive, 5 April 2021
Exhibition Review” Rivers Connect Unstoppable Forces in Contemporary” Monthly Ceramic Art June 2021_NCECA(Korean)
“Lan Zhaoxing and Renqian Yang: Between Mountains”. Asian Art Archive, 15 January 2019
Lin, Zi. “Renqian Yang and Her Porcelain Prose”. Tussle Magazine, June 2019
Wang, Sue. “Fou Gallery presents ‘Lan Zhaoxing and Renqian Yang: Between Mountains’ in New York”. CAFA Art Info, 29 January 2019
Wang, Sue. “Renqian Yang’s Solo Exhibition at Cayuga Museum of History and Art.” CAFA Art Info, 28 August 2019
"Fou Gallery announces “Renqian Yang: Complementary Colors” opening on Jan. 14." CAFA Art Info, January 6, 2017
“Abstract Art in Dialogue”, New York Art Series, The China Press(侨报纽约), Jan 31st, 2017
Lin, Zi. "Renqian Yang: Complementary Colors" Artco China(典藏·今艺) (March 2017)
Artist Guide, Renqian Yang “Complementary Colors”, Art.china.cn (艺术中国) March, 13th, 2017
"Urban sprawl#1”, "Urban sprawl#3" Stone Canoe Number 11, January 2017
Yang, Renqian. "Renqian Yang: She Makes Still-life Alive." Interview with Su Muzhe. ZaoWuji, January 2016.
Kostov, Ana Bambic. "Renqian Yang." ArtAscent, Issue 10, December 2014, 8-15.
SELECTED CATALOGUES AND PUBLICATIONS
Ceramics Now Magazine, featured artist, 15th Anniversary Edition, December 2025
Across the Divide, edited by Wei Zhen and Yan Li. Features my artwork, teaching project, and student works in a 20-year academic exchange archive. Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House (湖南美术出版社).
Tempture, Taoxichuan Spring & Autumn Art Fair, Jingdezhen, China, Oct 17th-19th 2023 exhibition catalog.
Beyond the Image, Shiwan cup, Emerging Artist Ceramic Sculpture competition exhibition Catalog, Shiwan Ceramics Museum, Foshan, Guangdong, China.
“Korea-China Ceramic Art Symposium” catalog, ye’s park ceramics art village, Icheon, South Korea, 2022
“With Roots Deep, Foliage Thrives – 根 深 叶 茂”- A Vision of Chinese Artists in American Academia 2022, Art and Design Exhibition catalog.
Rivers Connect Unstoppable Forces in Contemporary Ceramics, exhibition catalog, Northern Kentucky University, Syracuse University.2021
“International KOGEI Award in TOYAMA 2020” Exhibition catalog, Toyama Prefectural Museum of Art and Design, Toyama Japan, 2021
Renqian Yang: Urban Microcosmos (exhibition brochure). Text by Echo He. New York: Fou Gallery, 2018.