CHINESE ARTIST BASED IN LONDON
ARTIST BIO
Yin Wang is a London-based artist who explores the interplay between expressive figuration and abstraction through painting, sculpture, and printmaking. Born in Nanjing, China, and having lived in Shanghai and Hong Kong, her experiences shape poetic reflections on identity, familial bonds, and belonging. With a background in fashion design and a BA in Fine Art from the Art Academy London, her work—recently exhibited at Mall Galleries —bridges cultural heritage with contemporary themes, weaving personal narratives into broader explorations of love, memory, and displacement.
ARTIST STATEMENT
As a diasporic Chinese artist, I create expressive work to confront the ache of displacement and the fragile threads that bind us to our roots. My work is a visceral response to the spaces between here and there, then and now—a vessel for longing, remembrance, and the unspoken tensions of belonging. Rooted in painting but expanding into sculpture and printmaking, I merge traditional elements with contemporary themes, exploring ordinary lives, fragmented mythologies, viral moments from social media, and the weight of ancestral stories. These elements converge in my art as a meditation on selfhood, familial bonds, and the emotional terrain shaped by loss and longing—all set against the backdrop of contemporary China’s evolving social landscape.
I paint to confront the paradoxes of love and loss, tradition and transformation. Through intimate portraits—both literal and metaphorical—I amplify the whispers of generations. My working process is an act of empathy, grounding stories in the social realities of contemporary China’s shifting norms. By embracing the complexities of love, family, and cultural inheritance, I invite viewers to experience an emotional resonance that feels both deeply familiar and intriguingly foreign.
Material and colour serve as my emotional languages, deeply rooted in the traditions of Chinese art—especially ink painting, calligraphy, architecture, and folk art. These influences manifest in my work through the use of Xuan paper, expressive brushwork, symbolic imagery, monochromatic palettes, dripping techniques, and a dynamic interplay of scale, blending with Western mediums like oil and canvas. This approach embodies both fusion and collision, creating a space where divergent artistic traditions converge. Ultimately, I strive to forge a distinctive practice that fosters a rich aesthetic and cultural dialogue between East and West.
ARTIST CV
Education
2020 – 2021 Art Academy London – Certificate Fine Art
2005 – 2008 Donghua University (Shanghai, China) – MA Artistic Design (Fashion)
2001 – 2005 Donghua University (Shanghai, China) – BA Artistic Design (Fashion)
Awards
Liberty Art Awards 2024 , Shortlisted
Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exibition- Winsor & Newton Painting Award, Winner
Art Academy London- Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition prize, Winner
Art Academy London- Autumn Peer Prize, Second Place
Art Academy London- Principal’s Prize, Winner
Group Shows
PAST PRESENT FUTURE, Art Academy London
SALON, Fitzrovia Gallery, London
Celebrating Cultural Diversity, Cass Art Kingston
BA Fine Art Degree Show, Art Academy London
Contemporary Portraiture Degree Show, Art Academy London
2022
ALTERA Group Exhibition, Nolia's Gallery , London
2021
Certificate Grad Show, Art Academy London
Press
a-n Degree Shows Guide/2024, p30
https://stcuthbertsmill.blogspot.com/2024/05/artist-interview-yin-wang.html
https://stcuthbertsmill.blogspot.com
Broadcast
Sky Portrait Artist of the Year S10 E6 (Heat 5) contestant
Selected Commissions
Portrait of a Uyghur Family in London, Ablikim and Mukaddes’s Private Collection
2021- Now Through her ongoing project “50 Faces Made With Love”, Yin has created portraits for private collections in the UK, Europe and China