Yiyang Chen is a Glasgow-based Chinese artist and researcher. Working across painting, moving image, performance, ceramics and writing, her practice explores themes such as the monstrous, the archive, touch, and the gaze. Yiyang’s work engages with the liveness of bodies, (contact) surfaces, queerness, gesture, and self-reflexive configuration. Over the past three years, Yiyang has gained international recognition through exhibitions and screenings in the UK, Germany, China, and South Korea.

See Yiyang’s work as part of our exhibition of work by emerging artists, Starter Pack, curated by gallery intern Hope Reynolds. Starter Pack is many things: it’s a grass roots opportunity for artists to begin, or expand on, their repertoire of exhibitions, to connect with other artists in Glasgow, to further their understanding of working with galleries and curators, and to gain publicity. Starter Pack runs at Six Foot from August 12th to August 26th.

Hi Yiyang! Tell us what excites you about your work?
The liveness and the unknown. I find it fascinating to make works move through and between two and three dimensions. It’s the boundary that carries this sense of liveness that I intend to investigate through my exploration of materials and live media.

Tell us about your creative process. From the origins of an idea, to the outcome of creation.
I follow my instincts in most cases, letting my hands, my touch, and the materials guide me. I use my phone memos and notebooks to document spontaneous ideas at the outset, then develop them over time in my mind, considering scale, texture, and my emotional responses. My works often give material form to a body that has no form – an assemblage that is abstract.

 How did studying at an institution shape you as an artist? Did the experience impact your work or methods? 
I come from an East Asian background. I completed my BA in China and continued my studies at the Glasgow School of Art. I feel that this shift – from a geographical context to a cultural concern – has given me a way of thinking and a sensitivity that are difficult to fit into any existing boxes. The experience of studying in both the East and the West has also provided me with insights into developing a self‑analytical approach that weaves together my personal feelings and lived experiences as a form of resistance.

Who or what inspires you? Do you interact with your inspirations?
I have been inspired by many artists from 1970s feminism, such as Laura Mulvey’s writings and film practices, Chantal Akerman’s films, and the pioneering works of many artists in performance, painting, film, and writing. My work engages with these feminist legacies and seeks ways to situate myself from an East Asian perspective.

How do you overcome creative blocks?
Reading. Sometimes words, images, and ideas come to me in unexpected and weird ways. The act of reading can evoke or summon sensations or intuitions that transform into images, and vice versa.

What does community (in the arts) mean to you?
Community simply means that, in a world rooted in rigid hierarchy and occupied by the absurd ones in power, we (as creatives) ride for each other through collective care. More specifically, I reflect on the question: who do my works speak for and with? It’s always about a group of people who share a similar passion and try to find a way out of this through self-liberation and collaboration.

Find out more about Yiyang’s work on  Instagram. Starter Pack runs at Six Foot Gallery until Tuesday 26th August 2025.