Yilina Yang

Country where you live:

United Kingdom

City where you live:

City of London

Website:

https://yilinay.cargo.site

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/yilina.yang/

Statement :

I view myself as an observer of people's reflection in front of impermanence. My work reflects humanity's desire for permanence amid the transient nature of time. Ceramics, taking a thousand years to decompose, lasting much longer than human lifespan, satisfies to some extent our human desire for 'eternity'. My practice explores the poetics of impermanence. Through inspirations from local custom to domestic practices to social media posts, revealing how people deal with the futility of life via their seemingly insignificant archives. With a deep influence from historical Vanitas painting, my sculptures exist in a paradoxical state—between life and non-life, between elegance and kitsch, between the archaeological and the futuristic, capturing the tension between what endures and what fades, ultimately reflecting on the ways human construct meaning through objects that will outlast them.

Mirror

2025, ceramics, metallic glaze

Mirror, 2025

2025, ceramics, metallic glaze

Bones of Vanity

2025, ceramics, metallic glaze, crystal gems

Decay

2025, ceramics

Ghosts of Vanity

2025, ceramics, white glaze, crystal gems

Bio:

Yilina Yang is a ceramic sculptor based in London. Her current body of work, The Ghosts of Vanity, examines the tension between form and emptiness. Through sculptural forms that between haunted and lavish, she evokes a death-anxiety that is less about physical decay than about the fading of meaning. Yilina is currently pursuing her MA in Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art, following a BFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design (2021–2024), and a foundation in Illustration at the University of the Arts London. Her work has been exhibited in group shows across the UK and the US, including at the Royal College of Art's Hangar Gallery (London, 2025), Warbling Collective (London, 2024), and the Gelman Gallery (Providence, 2023). She is a recipient of several honors, including the Emerging Women Artists' Award (Arts to Hearts Project, 2024), the John A. Chironna Memorial Scholarship (2023), and recognition as a Municipal Inheritor of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Monochrome Glaze, China.