Ying Ye
Chinese - American
Artist Statement
As a Chinese citizen and immigrant to America, Ye Ying redefines American consumer culture and Chinese-American identity through her painting, sculpture, and performance. Ye experiences life living in America, where the two cultures of her life mingle. Working in her father’s restaurant has played an important part in shaping her life and her art.
She sees ordinary objects and places as unusual and sometimes mysterious. Although She has been in America for eight years, She has not lost her surprise at how different a light plug, door handle, or grocery store is from what she knew in China. She is aware that the America that she sees is different from those who grew up in this country. As a student, She has discovered that painting has become her third language between Chinese and English. She is developing confidence as her paintings has become more fluent in this third language. At times, the practice of painting has even changed her into a fearless person. This new perspective – her paintings in America framed by her Chinese heritage – is now the basis of her artwork. The painting language she is using includes energetic and gestural mark-making, with Chinese and English writing and cultural references. This allows her to explore what she senses as “unclear” and “chaotic” in the outside world, and which I internally experience as “ambiguous” and “unsure”.
Being an immigrant, she must reconcile her differing identities in exterior daily life and interior mental life. It puts her in a middle ground between where she came from and where she is now. The middle ground called “Green Card” is not even a ground. It is a platform floating in a dune of alienation between two countries. She experiences profound alienation as if she was a time traveler. But as a time traveler, she see things that other cannot.
Education
2018 BFA, Double Majors in Painting and Sculpture, Hartford Art School, University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT （Anticipated)
2016 Associate of Art, Visual Fine Art, Manchester Community College, Manchester, CT
Awards/ Scholarships