Artist Statement
My practice explores transformation through ceramics, installation, painting, collage, and found materials. I am interested in how time reveals itself through matter, memory, and cultural experience. Rather than treating materials as passive mediums, I regard them as active agents that carry their own histories and capacities for change. Fire, chance, gravity, weathering, and duration all participate in the making of my work.
Material experimentation forms the foundation of my practice. Glazes transform unpredictably during high-temperature firing, generating landscapes shaped by the interaction of earth and fire. Reclaimed porcelain fragments, wood, jade, paper, and industrial elements such as zippers are assembled into structures that investigate rupture, repair, and renewal. Across different media, I explore the relationship between permanence and impermanence, control and contingency, fragility and resilience.
My work is informed by Chinese philosophical thought, particularly ideas of transformation, interconnectedness, and cyclical existence. Drawing from historical cosmologies, ritual traditions, and personal memory, I examine how meaning emerges through processes of change. Whether through ceramic landscapes formed by kiln transformation, installations inspired by ancient belief systems, or paper collages that trace the experience of time, my works seek to reveal the continuous negotiation between material reality and human perception.
Full Bio
Yanni Zhang (b. Jiujiang, Jiangxi, China) is a Beijing-based interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans ceramics, installation, painting, collage, and mixed media. She received her MFA from the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and is a member of the China Artists Association.
Originally trained as a realist painter, Yanni’s artistic trajectory shifted toward material-based experimentation after 2017. Through extended research and studio practice in Jingdezhen, China’s historic center of porcelain production, she developed a body of work that investigates transformation, material agency, memory, and cultural inheritance. Her practice combines ceramic processes, found objects, handmade paper, reclaimed porcelain fragments, wood, jade, light, and industrial materials to explore the relationships between permanence and impermanence, rupture and repair, control and contingency.
Drawing inspiration from Chinese philosophical thought, historical cosmologies, and personal experience, Yanni examines how meaning emerges through processes of change. Her works range from kiln-generated ceramic landscapes and ritual-based installations inspired by Han Dynasty funerary culture to paper collages that trace feminine memory and temporal experience.
Her work has been presented internationally at institutions including Herald Art Center, New York; Hunan Museum, Changsha; China National Art Museum, Beijing; Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Hangzhou; and Manege Central Exhibition Hall, St. Petersburg. She has participated in artist residencies at The Pottery Workshop (Jingdezhen) and Herald Art Center, New York.