Renqian Yang

Lives and works in Oswego, N.Y.

Artist statement

My work explores emotion as a changing landscape shaped by memory, experience, and belonging. Moving between China and the United States has made me aware of transition—how our sense of self changes as we adapt to different places and cultures. I create abstract ceramic sculptures, wall pieces, and installations that give physical form to feelings and moments that are difficult to name or record. My thinking is influenced by Daoist ideas of change, duality, and the interconnectedness of all things. I am interested in how seemingly opposite states—restraint and freedom, vulnerability and resilience, dislocation and belonging—can exist together and continually reshape one another. Clay is central to my practice because it records touch, pressure, and traces of time. Working primarily with porcelain paper clay, I use hand-building, slip casting, image transfer, drawing, color, and multiple firings. Through layering, repetition, and accumulation, organic structures grow around and through geometric forms, creating energetic relationships that shift between what feels natural and constructed. My goal is to create emotional environments rather than fixed narratives, bringing personal experience into conversation with shared histories. I want viewers to slow down, move around the work, and look closely at how forms connect, grow, and transform—reflecting the ways emotions persist and change across time, place, and culture.

Artwork