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Renqian Yang: Neither Here nor Elsewhere

Throughout her career, Renqian Yang has consistently embraced duality. It is unsurprising that her favored material is porcelain, whose dual properties are fragility and permanence. Porcelain’s uses range from industrial materials like insulators and laboratory ware to Ming vases and Meissen figurines. Porcelain begins as earth but, after firing, evokes transcendence. Despite its solidity, porcelain is translucent when held up to the light. Porcelain has beguiled and seduced artists and collectors for centuries.

Working in China, Yang has traced porcelain’s origins to its invention there more than 1300 years ago. Her Chinese porcelains reflect the angular shapes of China’s vibrant urban cityscapes but also contain organic elements that evoke human emotion. Imagery drawn from 20th century Communist prints mingle with deeply spiritual classical brush painting. In many of Yang’s works, pure white porcelain stands in stark contrast to vibrant colors.

Neither Here nor Elsewhere features works Yang made in her home studio in Oswego and during residencies in China and North Carolina, all deeply rooted in place while simultaneously reflecting porcelain’s ubiquity and universality. Yang makes porcelain a vehicle for inquiry, reflection, and self-expression. She brings together organic and constructed forms, personal experience and collective histories, her work exploring how emotions persist, transform, and connect humanity across time, place, and culture.

About the Artist:

Renqian Yang is an artist and Associate Professor of Ceramics at SUNY Oswego, New York. She received her B.F.A. in Ceramics from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, China (2009), and her M.F.A. from Syracuse University (2014). Her work has been exhibited widely in the United States, the UK, China, South Korea, and Japan, and in 2024 was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London for its permanent collection.