they / them
Email / cassyaostudio@gmail.com
Instagram / @cass.yao
Base / New York
Cass Yao (b. 1998, China) aims to exam the voluntary act of bodily modification and the origin of violence.
Inquiring into the motive behind the construction of an alternative corporeality—be it spurred by medical need, desire, or societal imperatives—Yao interrogates the fidelity of volition and ethics amidst the tapestry of bodily modification. At the nexus of biomedical discourse and treatment of chronic ailments, Yao envisions deformed representation of flesh and organ, their endurance to violence, and their innate restorative resilience. Through crafting tactile surfaces reminiscent of in vivo tissues, they invoke from bloodshed a remolded body that experiences a simultaneous trinity - pain, pleasure, and constraint.
Bodily modification, transcends mere corporeal metamorphosis—it becomes a potent political gesture acted upon the body, empowering a fluidity that transcends binary opposition and patricide complex. In the sculpture and performance carried out by the artist, Yao captures moments of transitioning, evoking an ambiguous state of emergence - in which transitioning itself becomes perpetual, brimming with indefinite alteration of identities.
2025 “Corpus”, BRIC House Gallery, New York
2024 “Torsos In Rain”, New Uncanny Gallery, New York
2024 “Anchored”, Latitude Gallery, New York
2024 “The Abundance”, the Compound, Baltimore
2023 “Name, Place, Animal, Thing”, theBlanc Art Space, New York
2023 “Art Bei Ton x Hybrid Identity”, Zion, New York
2020 “Exiles”, h27 Gallery, Shanghai, China
2019 “Pilot”, Frost Gallery, New York
2019 “Blanc”, World Trade Center Oculus, New York