Xixi Yang

Xixi Yang is a contemporary painter based in Vancouver, Canada. Her practice explores the relationship between control and surrender, using painting as a space where intention and uncertainty coexist.

Working primarily with tempera and oil paint, Yang is interested in the moment when materials begin to move beyond complete control — when colours collide, surfaces transform, and unexpected forms emerge. Rather than forcing an image into existence, she creates conditions for the painting to develop its own language, then responds through layers of intervention.

For Yang, painting is not only a way to create an image, but a process of encountering a world as it forms. Her work reflects an ongoing dialogue between the artist and the material: between freedom and limitation, chaos and order, vulnerability and strength.

She believes that beauty and discomfort, darkness and tenderness, destruction and growth can exist within the same space.

“It happens first, then I respond.”