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
corporeal identity. Their practice navigates the psychological, spiritual, and political
dimensions of transformation, reflecting on how the body becomes a site of constant
mutation. Drawing from theories of epigenetics, gender formation, Foucault’s docile
body, and psycho-physical trauma, Yao investigates the forces that compel individuals
toward self-alteration—whether driven by medical necessity, erotic compulsion,
dysmorphia, or social imposition
.
At the core of their inquiry is a persistent questioning of agency and volition of the
modification: Who decides what a body should become? What is the cost of that
becoming? Yao’s sculptures and performances construct a tapestry where pain and
hope, constraint and resilience coexist—a complex anatomy suspended in flux. Through
porous forms and viscous materials such as prosthetic silicone, raw textile, and plastics,
Yao craft entities that enfold, melt, collapse, and regenerate, echoing the innate desire
to challenge the presumed finality of form and reconfigure bodily norms.
Their interest in morphogenesis—biological, psychic, and cultural—creates images that
fuse viscera and its containment. Sculptures evoke the texture of skin, wound,
membrane, or vessel, while performance inscribes the body through movements
reminiscent of surgical ritual or spiritual offering.
Yao frames bodily modification as a political gesture, an embodied intervention into
hierarchical systems of gender, power, and representation. Central to their work is the
notion of an innate maternity—not reproductive, but regenerative. Their works imagine
the body not as a fixed container, but as an open system capable of rewriting its
imprints, absorbing violence, and producing fluid generative identities that resist
oppression and limitation.
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 builiding, 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