bio
Christine Wong Yap is an interdisciplinary artist working in installations, sculptures, multiples, and works on paper to explore optimism and pessimism. Her work examines the paradox that mundane materials or situations can give rise to irrational expectations, emotions, and experiences. Major touchstones are language, light and dark, and psychology. Her work has been exhibited extensively in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as in New York, Los Angeles, Manila, Osaka, London, Newcastle, and Manchester (U.K). Born in California, Yap holds a BFA and MFA from the California College of the Arts. A longtime resident of Oakland, CA, she relocated to New York, NY in 2010.
full biography
Christine Wong Yap is an interdisciplinary artist working in installations, sculptures, multiples, and work on paper to explore optimism and pessimism. Her work examines the paradox that mundane materials or situations can give rise to irrational expectations, emotions, and experiences. Many of her works can be considered barometers of optimism or pessimism. Influenced by conceptual strategies, phenomenology, and psychology, her output is experimental and idiosyncratic, yet shares economical means and candid appearances.
Her work has been exhibited extensively in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as in New York, Los Angeles, Manila, Osaka, London, Newcastle, and Manchester (U.K.). Recent exhibitions include Irrational Exuberance (Asst. Colors) (solo show, Sight School, Oakland, CA), We have as much time as it takes (Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco) and Here and Now (Mills Art Museum, Oakland, CA). Reviews of her work have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Art Practical and S.F. Camerawork.
A recipient of a Jerome Foundation's Travel and Study Grant, the Center for Cultural Innovation's Investing in Artists grant, and a Murphy Fellowship in the Fine Arts, she has participated in the Breathe residency at Chinese Arts Centre (Manchester, U.K.), the Woodstock Byrdcliffe residency (Woodstock, NY), the FRED festival (Cumbria, U.K.), the Galleon Trade exchange project (Manila), and the Affiliate Artist program at the Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito, CA). In 2008, she was a collaborator in the Activist Imagination project, which was supported by the Creative Work Fund and a San Francisco Foundation Fund for Artists Matching Commissions Grant.
Born in California, Yap holds a BFA and MFA from the California College of the Arts (CCA). A longtime resident of Oakland, CA, she relocated to New York, NY in 2010.
Contact
Email: cwy [at] christinewongyap.com
