Floating

Xiaojing Yan

July 2017

Xiaojing Yan’s installation works fuse East and West and reflect on her fundamental formation in classical Chinese art and the major shift in cultural identity she experienced after she moved to Canada: “I filter Chinese thoughts through English words, English words through Chinese culture, and my images through the concepts of my art – all the while my core sense of Self remains suspended above and between these two worlds.” Chinese culture, training and traditions inspire the minimalist concepts and theatricality of her work, Western culture and training molds and informs it.
Light flows over and through Xiaojing Yan’s floating sculptural forms casting ghostly shadow patterns on the walls which enhance the ephemeral quality of her delicate work. Shadows naturally add to the mundane materials the artist works with: reed, rice paper and plastic tubes. The forms created with these materials can take on the shape of flowers such as water lilies and morning glories. Other times Yan ‘draws’ on gallery walls using countless amounts of star anise, a common Asian spice, to reinterpret Chinese ink-painting motifs such as mountains.
Wherever her vast imagination takes her, Xiaojing Yan’s mesmerizing art will engage viewers on many levels once they have stepped into this artist’s magical world.

Xiaojing Yan is a Chinese-Canadian installation artist based in Markham, Ontario. She received an MFA in Sculpture from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a BFA in Decorative Art from the Nanjing Arts Institute in Jiangsu, China. Yan has exhibited in galleries and museums in China, Canada and United States. She has received numerous grants and awards including project grants and from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canadian Council for the Arts and a Best of Show award from the Ontario Society of Artists.
http://yanxiaojing.com/