Xiaojing Yan

Xiaojing Yan is a China-born, Markham-based artist whose practice explores cultural memory, ecological systems, and material transformation. Drawing on Chinese aesthetic traditions, mythology, and her own experience of migration, she works with Lingzhi mushrooms, freshwater pearls, pine needles, cicada shells and paper, allowing organic processes and duration to act as collaborators in the work.

Her work has been exhibited at the Royal Ontario Museum, Suzhou Museum, the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, Hermès Maison Shanghai, Sharjah Art Museum, Contemporary Calgary and the Nevada Museum of Art. The Royal Ontario Museum commissioned both Cloudscape and Tiger’s Embrace; Hermès commissioned Into the Dreams and Emergence for its Shanghai Maison. Her sculpture Lingzhi Girl appeared on the cover of Art in America, and her writing has been published in Leonardo by MIT Press.

Yan received the 2026 David Suzuki Foundation Rewilding Arts Prize, the InStyle Women InCreation Prize, and a Chalmers Arts Fellowship, alongside grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Recent solo exhibitions include Peregrination at Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, and Under the Pines, Over the Clouds at the University of Waterloo Art Gallery. Permanent public works stand in Markham, Brampton, Burlington and Suzhou.