b.1998, Nanjing, China
they / them
Email / cassyaostudio@gmail.com
Insta / @cass.yao↵
Statement
Yao’s practice examines the body as a simulacrum continuously shaped by injury, care, and internal pressure. Rather than treating damage as an event to be resolved, they approach it as an ongoing condition through which the body persists and reorganizes itself in psychological space. Yao is interested in how bodily forms are authorized, segmented, and maintained through anatomy, medical intervention, and regimes of care, and how these external operations are gradually internalized.
They work with the symbolism of anatomy in a non-representational sense; it becomes an operational framework that determines where the body can be cut, repaired, or corrected. Anatomical diagrams establish hierarchies of organs and functions, defining which wounds are necessary and which forms of damage are acceptable. Yao translates this logic into sculptural structures that compress, suspend, and strain the body, referring to a state of being that hovers between what is animate and what is inanimate.
In addition, the idea of topology provides a way to understand how injury inhabits bodily continuity beyond localized wounds in Yao’s works. Drawing from topological thinking—where form is defined by deformation and perforation—they treat cavities as embedded ruptures that distort internal pressure and reshape how matter holds together. Their sculptures emphasize these conditions through sagging volumes, exposed supports, and porosity of the surface. Materials such as silicone, epoxy clay, resin-soaked textiles, and composite skins soften, stretch, and leak over time, registering injury as an active process rather than a repaired state. Across sculpture, installation, and performance, the body appears as an unstable system sustained by repetition, maintenance, and incomplete repair.