DECLARE: Zhiyuan Yang
What does it mean to be contemporary? We asked all eleven of the artists in the show to give us their thoughts, collected in our DECLARE blog series.
Zhiyuan is a visual artist from Beijing, China who makes work drawing from personal experience and self-identity. Yang challenges and constructs alternatives to normative definitions of gender, ethnicity, and social character through photography, video and performance. Yang use strategies that encompass masquerade, role playing and humor. The locations in which Yang works include the studio, art gallery, domestic and the public sphere. When asked what contemporary meant, Yang responded:
"I see making art as the necessary expression of the human spirit. Through this artistic activity, I am eager to cross all the boundaries, transcend my life, surpass the real, the social, and the personal, to tell people that I am not the enemy. Because art demands recognition that all human lives matter. Yes, I am just a human, but feel and live my life artfully, with imagination, freedom, and awareness.
