Renqian Yang was born in Xiangtan, Hunan Province, China in 1987. She earned her B.F.A. in Ceramics from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing in 2009 and her M.F.A. in Ceramics from Syracuse University in 2014. In May 2008, when she was attending Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in Chongqing, she also experienced one of the most devastating earthquakes in the history of China, which struck her with sadness; she also compared this experience with the current COVID-19 pandemic. Yang is interested in the concept of binaries. Her work addresses the unity and the contradiction of dichotomies: restriction and freedom, pessimism and optimism, complexity and simplicity, representation and abstraction, the man-made world and the natural world. At the same time, her work explores how the individual is related to nature, society, and oneself. Yang combines both traditional and nontraditional methods in her practices. While primarily focused on ceramics, her work also extends to installation, sculpture, drawing, painting, and functional everyday objects. Yang had a number of exhibitions in the US and China, including solo exhibitions at Fou Gallery (New York), Cayuga Museum of History and Art (Auburn, NY), Taoxichuan Ceramic Art Avenue Art Gallery (Jingdezhen, China), and Biggercore Gallery (New York) Currently, she lives and works in Oswego, New York as an artist and Assistant Professor at the State University of New York at Oswego.
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