On the New York subway, pencil in hand, Ye Cheng sketches mountains and rivers, seeking to bridge the temporal and cultural distance between her ancestral roots and her current environment. Although not formally trained in traditional Chinese painting, Ye's engagement with Song Dynasty masterpieces informs her artistic practice. Through this set of paintings, she reimagines Thousand Miles of Mountains and Rivers (千里江山图) as a "Le Redousse" (redoubt) within a contemporary Western context. Her work revitalizes the ancient Daoist philosophy of the "happy excursion," exploring its resonance within the complexities of modernity and diasporic experience. By blending historical research and personal expression, Ye Cheng creates an imagined homeland, crafting a visual dialogue between the past and the present.
Ye Cheng (b. 1992) is a Chinese American artist currently based in New York. Ye graduated with a MFA degree in Fine Art from the New School at Parsons, New York in 2022. And a BFA degree in painting from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2016. Ye has had her solo exhibition in Latitude Gallery in New York and exhibited widely include NADA Miami 2023; Chambers Fine Art in New York; Make Room in Los Angeles; and RHAA, Chicago; Soka Art in Beijing, China. Her work was selected in e-flux Education and was featured in Artnet as one of the “5 Artists on the verge of a breakthrough”.
