YAO QINGMEI

Early Life and Education

Born in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, Yao initially studied management at Zhejiang Ocean University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 2005. She later shifted towards contemporary art, enrolling at École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Limoges in 2007 before transferring to École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de la Villa Arson in Nice, where she graduated in 2013 with a DNSEP (Master) degree in Fine Arts with honours. She divides her time between Wenzhou and Paris.

Yao Qingmei’s Artworks

Yao Qingmei’s practice spans performance, video, and installation, often incorporating elements of scenography, sound poetry, contemporary choreography, and conceptual lecturing. Her work uses displacement, metaphor, and allegory to question mechanisms of political and social control, revealing the tension between serious critique and burlesque humour. By intervening in specific spaces, Yao disrupts established rules and explores how bodies shaped by symbols gain or lose power through appropriation and gesture.

Performance and Intervention

Central to Yao’s methodology is the notion of disruption in lived space. Her performance works stage encounters between the performer’s body and architectural or social frameworks, examining what happens when conventions are breached. She frequently employs irony and comedic poetics to expose the absurdity of power dynamics embedded in everyday systems. Her interventions often take the form of temporary occupation or reconfiguration—whether of a parking lot, an institutional corridor, or a public plaza—suggesting that resistance emerges from the body’s capacity to disturb established hierarchies.

Video, Installation and Objects

Yao’s video and installation works extend this inquiry into embodied critique. Rather than presenting finished narratives, these works create conditions for collision between different modes of language, movement, and perspective. Objects and installations often serve as staging grounds where the symbolic weight of ordinary things becomes visible. Her approach privileges lightness and spontaneity over monumentality, suggesting that the most profound acts of resistance may be the smallest ones.

Select Awards and Accolades

• Asian Cultural Council New York Fellowship (2022)
• Individual Creation Fellowship, DRAC Île-de-France, Paris (2022)
• The 68th Prix Jeune Création de Paris (2018)
• Special Jury Prize, 59th Salon de Montrouge, France (2014)
• Individual Creation Fellowship, DRAC Limousin, France (2014)

Yao Qingmei Exhibitions

To be kept up to date with news relating to Yao Qingmei, follow her on Ocula. You can also view her exhibitions on Ocula here.

Select Solo Exhibitions

• Steel Garden, ShanghART, Singapore (2025–2026)
• Blowing a Feather, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice, as part of the 60th La Biennale di Venezia Collateral Events (2024)
• Westbund Museum New Commission, Shanghai, China (2023)
• The Ecdysiast, Magician Space, Beijing, China (2017)
• Sanzu Ding and Its Motif, OCAT Xi’an Contemporary Art Terminal, Xi’an, China (2016)
• Professor YAO, Magician Space, Beijing, China (2015)

Select Group Exhibitions

• A Century of Art Between China and France—A Perpetual Path, Hongmei Art Space, Shenyang, China (2024)
• 目(mù) China, A New Generation of Artists, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2024)
• Scales in Flames, Shanghai Bund Art Center, Shanghai, China (2023)
• Engaging with the World: Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art Since the Dawn of the 20th Century, Taikang Art Museum, Beijing, China (2023)
• A Story of a Merchant, Kurimanzutto Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico (2023)
• The Intimate Revolt, Goethe Institute, Beijing, China (2022)
• Floating, Guangdong Art Museum, Guangzhou, China (2022)
• Shards from the Mirror of History, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, United States (2021)
• The Real Show, Centre d’art de Brétigny, Brétigny, France (2022)
• Jeune Création 2018, Palais des Études (Beaux-Arts de Paris), Paris, France (2018)
• NOW Chinese Female Contemporary Artists, HOME (Manchester) and Tate Research Centre: Asia (London), United Kingdom (2018)
• Frontier: Re-assessment of Post-Globalisational Politics, OCAT Art Center, Shanghai, China (2017)

Website and Social Media

Yao Qingmei’s website can be found here, and her Instagram can be found here.

More Reading

You can follow Yao Qingmei on Ocula to be updated when new articles about her practice are published.

Yao Qingmei FAQs

Ocula | 2026