Amy Yao (born June 18, 1977, Los Angeles, California) is a musician, curator, and contemporary visual artist making work in many different mediums informed by ideas of waste, consumption, and identity. [1] She is represented by 47 Canal in New York City. Yao is a lecturer in visual arts at Princeton University in New Jersey. [2] Her sister Wendy Yao was proprietor of Ooga Booga art boutique and bookstore in Los Angeles. [3] [4]
In 1993, Yao and her sister Wendy were founding members of Emily's Sassy Lime, an all-Asian American teenage riot grrrl trio from Southern California. [1] [3] [4] The band dissolved in 1997. [5] They all played multiple instruments and switched instruments during performances. [6] Yao has been involved over the years with several different bands, frequently collaborating with Tobi Vail.
Yao received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Art Center College of Design in California in 1999 and a Master of Fine Arts from Yale University in Connecticut in 2007. [2] Yao co-founded contemporary art gallery China Art Objects Galleries in 1999 with other graduates of Art Center. [7] [8]
Yao has exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art (Eckhaus Latta: Possessed), [9] MoMA PS1 (Greater New York, 2010), [10] 47 Canal (Weeds of Indifference), [11] and Various Small Fires (Bay of Smokes). [12] Yao did a TRADES artist residency in Hawaii in 2017, and she was included in the 2019 Honolulu Biennial. [5]
Writing about Weeds of Indifference in Artforum , Chloe Wyma noted, "Refusing the readymade’s historical and contemporary postures—the cynical/ironic critique of the commodity form, the mystification of materials—Yao’s gnomic, desublimated sculptures are sometimes puzzling and not always easy to love. Nonetheless, their difficulties reflect honest questions: 'What is even real?' she asks, speaking of when 'the new authentic is used to eradicate what came before.'" [11]
Amy and Wendy Yao have also collaborated on curatorial projects, including their Art Swap Meet at Andrea Zittel's High Desert Test Sites. [1] [13] [14]
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