Peishan Huang received her BA from Communication University of China in 2018 and her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2022. Her recent solo exhibitions include Crack in the Curtain at Fotografiska Shanghai; Imagine a Returning Arrow at Inna Art Space, Hangzhou; The Six Mysteries of Fountains at 743 ART Lab, Shanghai; and Meandering the Labyrinth at BA Project, Shenzhen. Her work has also been exhibited at Chambers Fine Art, New York; M+B Gallery, Los Angeles; Latitude Gallery, New York; ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai; Three Shadows Photography Art Center, Beijing; and international art fairs including Photofairs Shanghai, Westbund Art & Design, and Beijing Dangdai.

Peishan Huang employs a diverse array of media, including images, videos, sculptures, and installations. Her recent work delves into the interplay between physical and emotional landscapes, exploring the emotional resonance of objects and spaces, and expressing aesthetic perspectives through the use of color, materials, and poetic emotions, as well as the narratives created through them. Her research interests encompass artificial nature, spatial narratives, mixed media, readymade objects, traditional discourses, as well as the environmental and emotional challenges of Generation Y and Generation Z, and ethnic minorities in contemporary urban landscapes.

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

I was initially trained in advertising, which exposed me early on to how images are constructed to persuade, to simplify, and to circulate. Rather than taking images as neutral representations, I became aware of their underlying structures, and how they are staged, edited, and mediated.

My interest in photography began much earlier, during high school, when my father gave me his old camera. At that time, photography was simply a way of recording and observing the world around me. It wasn’t until my final year of undergraduate studies that I started to consider pursuing it more seriously. Even then, I had little understanding of photography as a contemporary art practice. I didn’t yet know what sculpture could be, or that installation could function as a media.

This changed during my graduate studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where I was exposed to a wide range of media and ways of thinking. Through both coursework and conversations with peers, I began to move beyond the image as a flat surface. I started to extract it from the two-dimensional plane. I tried to transfer, layer, and embed images into materials and spatial structures.

Since then, my practice has developed around the idea that images are not simply something to look at, but something that constructs the conditions of seeing. This has led me to work across photography, sculpture, and installation, where images operate as surfaces, skins, or structures within space, rather than as fixed representations.

What is your creative process like? Do you follow a routine or work spontaneously?

My process is neither strictly routine-based nor entirely spontaneous. I tend to think of it as building a set of conditions within which things can emerge, shift, or fail.

Rather than starting with a fixed image or outcome, I often begin with materials, spatial constraints, or fragments, or something partial or unresolved. These elements gradually enter into relation with one another through processes of testing, layering, and displacement.

I usually work on multiple pieces simultaneously, allowing ideas to circulate across different works and media. Photography is often only one moment within a longer process, it can be scanned, transferred, printed onto unconventional surfaces, or embedded into sculptural forms.

What interests me is not the stability of an image, but how it transforms as it moves across materials and contexts. In that sense, the process remains open-ended. It is structured, but never fixed.

How do you portray the emotional qualities of objects and spaces in your work?

I don’t approach emotion as something to be directly expressed. Instead, I see it as something that emerges from the relationships between objects, materials, and spatial conditions.

In my work, objects and spaces are often slightly displaced from their expected functions. Curtains, fences, reflective surfaces, or fragments of domestic structures appear familiar, but they don’t behave in stable or predictable ways. They may block, delay, or redirect vision, creating a sense of hesitation or misalignment.

Materials also play an important role in this. Translucent fabrics, mirrored surfaces, or resin can simultaneously reveal and conceal, producing layered and unstable perceptions. What the viewer experiences is not a fixed image, but a shifting condition of visibility.

The emotional quality, if there is one, does not come from the objects themselves, but from this instability, from the tension between exposure and concealment, intimacy and distance, control and loss of control.

Your practice engages with Generation Y and Z, as well as ethnic minorities in urban landscapes. How do these social contexts influence your work?

I don’t approach these social groups as subjects to be represented directly. Instead, I’m more interested in the environments and visual conditions that shape how these identities are formed and perceived.

For me, urban space is never neutral. It is structured by systems of visibility, control, and circulation——operating through architecture, images, and mediated surfaces. Within these conditions, different generations and communities often occupy positions that are unstable, fragmented, or partially obscured.

My own relationship to these contexts is also evolving. I grew up in Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan, and later moved between different cities. This long-term experience of displacement has continuously reshaped how I understand my own background, as well as the conditions surrounding younger generations within minority communities. Rather than fixing these reflections into a clear statement, I remain in a process of observing, often beginning with simple acts of recording, while allowing the complexity of these experiences to remain unresolved.

In my work, this context does not appear as narrative, but as spatial and material structures. Elements such as curtains, fences, or reflective surfaces function as interfaces that regulate access, visibility, and separation. While the works are constructed by myself and do not directly involve others, I am interested in allowing traces of collective presence, subtle imprints of emotion, tension, or memory to remain embedded within them.

Rather than depicting identity, I focus on how it is continuously constructed and negotiated within these environments. The work does not represent these contexts, it operates through them.

What role do you believe art plays in social and cultural change?

I tend to be cautious about attributing direct social or cultural change to art. Rather than producing immediate impact, I see art as something that operates on the level of perception.

What art can do is to subtly reconfigure how reality is organized and experienced—how we see, relate to, and move within images, objects, and spaces. These shifts are often slow and difficult to measure, but they can alter the frameworks through which we understand the world.

In my own practice, this happens through the construction of spatial and visual conditions—where visibility is delayed, fragmented, or redirected. By destabilizing what appears familiar, the work opens up a space for reconsideration, rather than delivering a fixed message.

So rather than thinking of art as a tool for change, I see it as a way of producing slight displacements, small but persistent shifts in how things can be perceived and negotiated.

What challenges have you faced as an artist, and how have you overcome them?

One of the ongoing challenges in my practice is dealing with the instability of images today. With the presence of digital editing, AI, and endless post-editing, the idea of photography as a stable or truthful medium has become increasingly uncertain.

Rather than trying to resolve this, I chose to work through it by treating the image not as something to be trusted, but as something that can be displaced, fragmented, and re-materialized. This shift allowed me to move beyond the limitations of photography as a purely representational medium.

Another challenge has been working across different media without a fixed framework. Moving between photography, sculpture, and installation often means giving up a sense of control or resolution. There is no single method that guarantees an outcome.

On a more practical level, I also face the conditions that many artists encounter： limitations of budget, studio space, and production resources. My way of working through this is to maintain a parallel practice as a commercial photographer and art director. Rather than being separate from my artistic work, these two directions remain in dialogue with each other, while also providing the necessary support to sustain both my life and practice.

Over time, I’ve come to understand these challenges not as problems to overcome, but as conditions to work within. Keeping the process open, allowing uncertainty, and accepting that some aspects remain unresolved have become essential to how I work.

Text and photo courtesy of Peishan Huang

Website: https://huang-peishan.me/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_peishan_huang_/