he / they
Email / cassyaostudio@gmail.com
Instagram / @cass.yao
CV on request
Cass Yao (b. 1998, China) is an artist based in New York and Shanghai.
Yao’s practice delves into the voluntary act of bodily modification. Inquiring into the motive behind the construction of an alternative corporeality—be it spurred by medical need, internal desire, or societal imperatives—Yao interrogates the essence of volition amidst the tapestry of bodily modification. At the nexus of biomedical discourse and the treatment of chronic ailments, Yao envisions deformed representation of flesh and organs, and their endurance to violence. Through crafting tactile surfaces reminiscent of humid tissues, he invokes 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, implementing both oppression and emancipation upon the subject’s body. In the sculpture and performance carried out by the artist, Yao enunciates the authorship of the body and its capacity of entitling oneself a multiplicity of identities.