By: Kristin Kvevli

Yulin Yuan, an interdisciplinary artist based in Virginia, brings an intensely personal lens to her exploration of identity and culture. Born in China and raised in South Africa, Yuan’s unique background shapes her approach to collage, photography, and video. Her work delves into complex themes of immigration, family history, and mythology, particularly focusing on the tension between memory and belonging. A student of the arts, Yuan received her BFA from the University of Cape Town in South Africa and recently obtained her MFA at James Madison University in the U.S. This global journey is central to her creative process, allowing her to bridge disparate cultural worlds in her art.

Navigating Memory Through Collage

One of Yuan’s signature works is the collage “House of Yuan,” inspired by a family story from China. This piece revisits the legacy of the Yuan family house, a significant two-story building in Guiding, China, which once symbolized Confucian values. Although Yuan had never experienced the house personally due to its takeover by the government, the building carries a deep ancestral meaning. “I wanted to capture its essence, not just as a physical structure but as a container for our family history,” Yuan explains. She draws inspiration from Gaston Bachelard’s ideas about the relationship between people and their homes, merging the physicality of the building with a deeply emotional connection to her family’s past.

Through this work, Yuan embarks on a process of reconstructing her sense of identity across two worlds: the China of her ancestors and the new spaces she inhabits in South Africa and the U.S. In the collage “Bind,” Yuan further explores this theme by reflecting on immigration and cultural preservation. The objects and photos she uses to build her collages evoke her family’s culinary traditions, a rich yet undocumented part of her heritage. “Food preparation was always about more than sustenance—it was about passing down stories and memories,” Yuan shares. In “Bind,” she juxtaposes Chinese traditions with the English-language cookbooks that symbolize her family’s bilingual journey, demonstrating the dual identities immigrants often navigate.

Photography and Mythology: Recreating Identity

Yuan’s photographic work also plays with themes of identity, particularly within the context of her upbringing as a first-generation Chinese immigrant in South Africa. Her photo series “EGG of Chaos” (2022-2023) stands out as a reflection of Chinese mythology filtered through the lens of her immigrant experiences. “I grew up between cultures, never fully belonging to one place,” Yuan notes. This sense of displacement is mirrored in her photographs, where she stages scenes based on Chinese myths in unfamiliar domestic environments. By using objects found in the homes of others, Yuan constructs temporary settings that explore how identity is both formed and distorted by context.

Yuan’s staged scenes, where household items are transformed into mythical backdrops, reflect her belief that external forces construct and reconstruct identity. “The homes I used weren’t mine, but they became part of my narrative,” Yuan says. This ability to adapt and reframe her personal history within foreign environments speaks to her broader search for belonging.

Her work “Tracing History” (2022) continues this theme, using elements of nature and coal to create imprints on the skin, symbolizing a direct connection to her ancestors. This deeply intimate exploration of lineage transforms the body into a canvas, a site where personal and familial histories intersect.

Sculptures and Video: Tangible and Ephemeral Forms

Yuan’s recent sculptural work, created in 2023, delves into the body’s physicality in relation to discarded household objects. By combining casts of her body parts with found objects, Yuan breathes new life into obsolete items. “These objects carry stories of their own,” she says. “By merging them with the human form, I give them new meaning, creating something entirely different.” This reinvention process mirrors her broader artistic themes—preserving stories, blending the old with the new, and reimagining identity within shifting environments.

Her video work also demonstrates this complex negotiation between past and present. In “The House of Yuan” (2022), she explores her family’s ancestral home in China. Using found imagery, Yuan reconstructs this space, which exists only in memory and myth, capturing the longing for reconnection with her roots. Her hands, visible on screen, move between different layers of visual material, embodying creating a place that simultaneously exists and doesn’t exist. “It’s a space I’ve never physically known, but it’s part of me,” Yuan reflects.

Her earlier video, “Her Voice” (2019), takes on a different subject, responding to the silencing of historical narratives. Inspired by the removal of a statue commemorating comfort women in Japan, Yuan comments on the erasure of historical trauma, using video as a medium to give voice to untold stories.

Bridging Global Narratives

Yuan’s work is a bridge between worlds—geographically, culturally, and temporally. Her art reflects the ways in which immigrant experiences, mythology, and personal history can converge to form complex, multilayered narratives. Through her exploration of intimate spaces, she uncovers the tension between belonging and detachment, capturing the contradictions inherent in trying to find identity across multiple continents.

From intricate collages of family history to ephemeral photography that rewrites mythology, Yuan’s work is deeply personal yet universally resonant. Her ability to navigate multiple cultural spaces speaks to the broader immigrant experience, where home is both a place of memory and a site of continual reinvention.

As she continues her MFA studies, Yulin Yuan remains committed to exploring these intersecting worlds. She is driven by the desire to preserve stories, reconstruct identity, and create spaces where memory and history intertwine. Through her interdisciplinary approach, Yuan’s work offers a powerful meditation on the meaning of home, belonging, and the stories that shape us.

To connect with Yulin, follow her on Instagram and visit her website at https://yulinyuanart.com.

Published by: Khy Talara