Yan Wu
 

    Painting
    Sculpture
    Poetry
    CV & Bio
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CV

b. 1975, Beijing, China
Lives and works in Beijing and London

EDUCATION
2025    MFA in Fine Art, Goldsmiths University of London, London, UK
2022   GradD in Fine Art, Goldsmiths University of London, London, UK

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2025     ( Upcoming) RBSA Watercolour Prize 2025 Exhibition, Birmingham, UK
               Interstitial Territories, Handbag Factory Gallery, London, UK
2024     Actor Network, Royal College of Art, Battersea, London, UK
              Illusionary Echoes: Between Fragility and Force, no format Gallery,   London, UK
              Royal Watercolor Society Open 2024, Bankside Gallery, London, UK
2023     I'm falling into..., IMT Gallery, London, UK
2019     The 3rd National Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Paintings, The Cultural Palace of Nationalities, Beijing, China
              Invitation Exhibition of CAFA, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China
              The Selected Exhibition of CAFA, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China
2018     The 3rd National Exhibition of Chinese Birds and Flowers Paintings, Huan Tai Hu Art City, Changzhou, China
2017      National Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Paintings, QingZhu Art Museum, Shanghai, China
              The Selected Exhibition of CAFA, AiMu Art Museum, Beijing, China
2016     Hue Art in the Contemporary Era, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China
2014     The 2nd Exhibition of Literature and Art, The China Millennium Monument, Beijing, China
2011      National Exhibition of Chinese Paintings, YuShun Art Museum, Harbin, China
              The 8th National Exhibition of Chinese Hue Art Paintings, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China

INSTITUTIONAL COLLECTIONS
Huan Tai Hu Art City
QingZhu Art Museum
YuShun Art Museum


BIO

Yan Wu (b. 1975, Beijing, China) is an artist based in London and Beijing, whose practice spans painting, ceramics, and writing.
Her paintings explore the tension between symbolic meaning and natural beauty, creating visual worlds that blend nature, cultural iconography, and the mechanics of image-making. Her work reflects a deep engagement with philosophical thought, material sensitivity, and cultural hybridity.

Her paintings are informed by personal emotions, trauma, displacement, and healing, filtered through the lens of nature and cultural heritage. These inner experiences, alongside her self-identification and cross-cultural perspective, provide a vital foundation for her artistic inquiry.

Characterized by a delicate and slowed-down visual rhythm, her work expands and reformulates found imagery through methodical and layered techniques, playfulness, and a mischievous spectacle that emerges in her compositions. Her paintings draw from diverse references, including Song Dynasty bird-and-flower painting, Surrealism, Rococo aesthetics, and the intricately constructed landscapes of Ming and Qing Dynasty gardens.

She often undertakes research-based journeys to view old master works in situ. These encounters, both conceptual and technical, become catalysts for new works. Her surfaces, constructed with thin layers of light-pigmented paint, appear to emanate from the silk itself, a quality rooted in traditional techniques. Working with ink, mineral pigments, water-based colors, mulberry silk, and rice paper, she fuses historical media with contemporary concerns, crafting narratives that transcend time and culture.

In Chinese bird-and-flower paintings, natural motifs were often imbued with symbolic values and emotional resonance. Yan Wu critically re-engages with this tradition, deconstructing its representational language and exploring its evolution as a site of cultural negotiation. Her work does not depict nature per se but instead investigates how traditional nature imagery functions as an interstitial space between history and imagination, artifice and authenticity.

Employing l’entre (interstitiality) as a conceptual framework, Yan repositions familiar motifs — scholar rocks, birds, and flora — outside of their conventional symbolic systems, situating them in a transitional space between tradition and contemporaneity.

Through her paintings, Yan invites the viewer into a meditative pause amidst the chaos of society. She hopes that the quiet force of form, color, and brushwork not only evokes the beauty of nature but also opens space for questioning assumptions and reimagining cultural memory.