Yeh Wei-Li was born in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1971, and emigrated to the United States with his family at the age of eleven. As a teenager in Tampa, Florida, Yeh was fascinated by heavy metal music and aspired to be a rock-and-roll photographer. He consequently studied photography at the University of South Florida (BFA 1994) and later received a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design (1997). Graduate workshops at Brown University's experimental Literary Arts Program and a three-month visit to Taiwan in 1996 (his first since emigrating), fueled his thesis work on themes of displacement, assimilation, cultural identity and racial politics. Relocating to New York City, Yeh exhibited work at Columbia University, New York University, Bronx Museum of Art and the International Center of Photography. Yeh presented his seminal photography work, Guest: On the Subject of Home, at his "Septemberly" Brooklyn studio in December 2001, shortly after 9/11. Since returning to live permanently in Taiwan in 2002, Yeh has been active as an artist, curator and instigator. Yeh’s work is shown and collected internationally, and his photographic and text-based projects continue to explore the dynamics of the individual within collective practices, centering on both the personal and the socio-political relationships between the self and the city in which he resides. His collective and collaborative-based practice is seen in major projects such as Treasure Hill Tea + Photo (THTP) and the ongoing Antiquity-like Rubbish Research & Development Syndicate. Yeh lives and works in Yangmei, Taiwan and still holds hope of going on a world tour with a rock & roll band.
