Yixuan Shao’s practice is one of listening before it is one of making —— listening, not only as a physiological function but also as a subjective internal experience. She creates installation works using spatialized sound, image, and writing to gauge the physical space while inviting the viewers to take parts with their own subjectivities. Audio as a material, its substance, vibrational property, and auditory procedure, are emblematic information to process other tangible materials. Her sculptures are inner sounds materialized in visual forms. Stretched out and slowed down in time and space, these objects speak their alter-egos in noise and silence —— two contradicting yet connected margins in soundmaking.
Shao has exhibited at the Wallach Art Gallery, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Block Gallery, Arts Letters & Numbers, Spectrum, Lenfest Center for the Arts, The FRONT Arte Cultura, the Semana Internacional de Improvisación in Ensenada, Mexico, the Athenaeum Art Center, and the Conrad Prebys Music Center. She is collaborating with Michael Joo’s Studio to create a body of sound and video works. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Composition at UC San Diego and MFA in Sound Art at Columbia University. She is the cofounder of Alchemyverse, an artist collective which is in residency with Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
Education
2021 MFA, Sound Art, Columbia University, School of the Arts, New York, NY
2019 BA, Composition, University of California, San Diego, CA
Solo Exhibition
2020 -spillage, Arts Letters and Numbers, New York, NY
Selected Group Exhibitions
2021 Sound Art MFA Group Exhibition, Fridman Gallery, New York
2021 I thought it was a drought, Yonkers, NY
2021 PPE, LeRoy Neiman Center Gallery, New York, NY
2021 MFA Thesis Exhibition, Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, NY
2021 First-year MFA Show, Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, NY
2020 Out of Darkness, Block Gallery, commissioned by Raleigh Arts, NC
2019 Memory Is A Silence: Sound Art In the Library, The Gabe M. Wiener Music & Arts Library, New York
Performances
2020 Source Materials, Spectrum, New York
2020 Columbia Composers and Sound Artists, Lenfest Center for the Arts, New York
2019 Semana Internacional de Improvisacion, Esenada, Mexico
Professional experience
2021 Artist Talk “Living (in) Materials”, Columbia University, Computer Music Center, NY
2021 Collaborator in SENSORY MERIDIAN, Kavi Guta Gallery, Chicago
2020 Sound engineer and acoustic consultant, Michael Joo Studio, NY
2020 Teaching Assistant for Sound Art Studio III, Columbia University , NY
2020 Cofounder of Alchemyverse (且用), artist collective, NY
2020 Visiting artist for Sound/Interactive Media I & II, taught by Liz Philips, SUNY Purchase
Honors/Residencies
2021 Co-resident, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Governors Island
2021 Co-resident, La Wayaka Current, Chile/London
2020 Sound Art Teaching Fellowship, Columbia University
2020 Arts Inter-Program Scholarship, Columbia University
2020 Artist in Residence, Arts Letters and Numbers
2019 Arts Inter-Program Scholarship, Columbia University
2019 The Farrell Prize, UC San Diego Department of Music
Public Engagement
2021 UNSUNG STORIES: Women at Columbia's CMC
2021 Columbia’s 2021 visual arts class returns to Columbia in Wallach’s First Year MFA exhibition, Columbia Daily Spectator, NY
2020 MFA Spotlight, Artforum, NY
2019 UC San Diego composer uses the sounds of the sea to inspire conservation, San Diego Union Tribune, San Diego