Artist Statement

My practice explores absent forms of existence through installation and digital media. Drawing from personal memory, cultural history, and technological systems, I wonder how social structures determine what is allowed to exist and what is forced into forgetting.

Recent works focus on the concept of unrealized female existence in China, examining lives that were never permitted to emerge and the traces left behind by their absence. Through virtual spaces, sculptural forms, and installations, I construct environments that ask viewers to encounter what is missing rather than what is present. I am interested in the relationship between physical and digital worlds, particularly how technology can serve as a medium for memory and imagination. My work creates spaces that encourage reflection on the boundary between existence and nonexistence.

Bio

Lingzhi Yuan is a Chinese interdisciplinary artist who focuses on installation, digital media, sculpture, and interactive technologies. She received her MFA in Creative Technologies from Virginia Tech in 2026 and her BFA in Sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2024. Her work explores absence, memory, unrealized female existence, and the systems that shape individual lives. By combining physical materials with digital environments, she creates immersive experiences that examine the relationship between cultural structures and forms of existence.

Yuan’s recent projects investigate the intersections of feminism, technology, and memorialization, with particular attention to lives that remain unseen. Through installation and virtual space, she seeks to create encounters between presence and absence.