b.1998, China
they / them
cassyaostudio@gmail.com
ig @cass.yao
Statement
Cass Yao examines the voluntary act of bodily modification and its proxy in restructuring the corporeal. Their practice navigates the psychological, spiritual, and political terrains of transformation, foregrounding the body as a mutable site shaped by psycho-physical trauma. Informed by theories of epigenetics, gender formation, abjection, and docile bodies, Yao investigates the forces that compel body-alteration—whether driven by medical necessity, erotic compulsion, dysmorphia, or social imposition.
Who decides what a body should become? How to endure the becoming? Yao’s sculptures and performances tapestry a complex anatomy where pain and hope, constraint and resilience coexist. Through porous form and viscous material such as prosthetic silicone, raw silk, and plastics, their sculptures evoke the recollection of wound, membrane, or vessel. These entities enfold, melt, collapse, secrete, and regenerate.
Yao frames bodily modification as a political gesture, intervening into hierarchical systems of gender, power, and representation. It turns to the pondering of the maternality of the body, a regression that is nurturing yet decaying. The body modifies itself to offer care, resist closure and disciplinary power, and shelter.
CV
EDUCATION
2023 BFA in Interactive Media Arts, New York University
RESIDENCY
2025 NARS Foundation 2025 Season III, New York
GROUP EXHIBITION
2025 “Interwoven Landscape”, LiC-A, New York
2025 “Corpus”, BRIC House Gallery, New York
2024 “Torsos In Rain”, New Uncanny Gallery, New York
2024 “Anchored”, Latitude Gallery, New York
2023 “Name, Place, Animal, Thing”, theBlanc Art Space, New York
2023 “Art Bei Ton x Hybrid Identity”, Zion, New York 2022 “Playhouse”, :iidrr Gallery, New York
2020 “Exiles”, h27 Gallery, Shanghai, China
2019 “Pilot”, Frost Gallery, New York
2019 “Blanc”, World Trade Center Oculus, New York
PERFORMANCE PROJECT
2025 “Cross Inversion”, Grace Exhibition Space, New York
2024 “Surgical Sacrifice v2”, New Uncanny Gallery, New York
2024 group performance, Anarchist Art Festival, New York
2024 “Surgical Sacrifice”, the Compound, Baltimore
2024 "Filthy Spasm", the Sultan Room, New York
2023 “Hyperplasia”, Grace Exhibition Space, New York
2023 “Bryophytes”, Grace Exhibition Space, New York