Luka Yuanyuan Yang

Factors such as race, nationality, gender, religion or body, all define the identity of a person. As the fundamental way we perceive and express ourselves, identity is constantly changing with migration, residency changes, and growing life experiences. Especially for immigrants, mixed identities resulting from different cultures have become a unique phenomenon in the process of globalization. Artist Luka Yuanyuan Yang is good at realizing visual narrative with various media such as video, photography, artist’s book and performance. Contemporary art is integrated with sociology, history, and psychology. She focuses on population mobility, immigration, and the disappearance and reconstruction of identity. Without beautifying the reality, she establishes the internal narrative inside the same family and race and objectively explores the "acceptance" and "respect" between "the outsider" as a heterogeneous substance and other groups and cultures.

 

Since 2018, Yang has been engaged in research and creation related to Chinatown. The existence of Chinatown in modern American cities is like a Chinese antique. It is not only an ethnic settlement, a blood bond, but also a springboard for the Chinese into American society. Based on the stories of female dancers in Chinatown nightclubs, Yang created her first documentary feature Women's World (to be released in 2023) and the related short film Coby & Stephen Are in Love (2019). However, during her trip to shoot the documentary feature in the United States, Cuba and China, she accumulated a lot of other stories and materials. These stories discuss the question "Where is home?" and related topics in the history of Chinese immigration over a longer time span. "I was born without a home. My home is where my heart is." It is a constant theme that runs through Yang's many projects for a long time. Titled Make It Home, this exhibition brings together several works from 2019 to 2022, including short films American Relatives, Cantonese Tunes on Mott Street, The Lady from Shanghai and Tales of Chinatown, as well as a series of photographs and archives. When the audience enters the exhibition hall, it is like entering a splendid theatre where independent segments of time and space are being played one after another; in the archive-like exhibition hall, the audience seems to be facing the Mnemosyne Atlas and will discover the implicit clues buried by the artist—cultural secrets under complex identities.

 

Art can also be a powerful tool for exploring how identities change when moving from one culture to another. While probing the issues about identity, Yang expresses her deliberate thoughts and new interpretations of the cultural rupture and nostalgia of immigrants. In the semi-fictional storyline, Yang portrays the endeavours to Make It Home.

Luka Yuanyuan Yang (b.1989, Beijing) is a visual artist and filmmaker. She does visual storytelling through film, photography, artist books and performance. She was graduated from London College of Communications, University of the Arts London with a BA (hons) in photography. Her works has been exhibited at the Centre for Heritage Arts & Textile, Hong Kong, China; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; Power Station of Art, Shanghai; Times Art Museum & Times Arts Center Berlin; Chinese American Arts Council, NYC; Art in General, NYC; Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo, Uruguay; M WOODS, Beijing; Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, Beijing; G Museum of Art, Nanjing; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing; OCAT, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen; AIKE, Shanghai; Modern Art Base, Shanghai, Shanghai Urban Space Art Season and more.

 

Yang received awards internationally from organizations such as Art Power 100 (2019); Asian Cultural Council (2017); Huayu Youth Award(2016); Rencontres d’Arles(2015); Magenta Foundation(2013); Three Shadows Tierney Fellowship (2012) .

 

Her short film "Coby and Stephen are in Love" screened at multiple international film festivals such as Atlanta Film Festival, Camden International Film Festival, Asian American International Film Festival and Women Make Waves etc. In 2021 the film was published on The New Yorker.  Her first feature "Women's World" has attracted widespread attention at home and abroad, and has won awards and praise in the industry section of Pingyao International Film Festival, Doc Edge Documentary Festival, CNEX, Shanyi International Women's Film Festival. The film will be released in 2023.