Grace Yan
United States
ARTIST BIO
Grace Yan grew up in China and now resides in South Carolina in the US. She is a faculty member at the University of South Carolina.
As a photographer, her work seeks to create intimate narratives of an unreturnable past - an experience felt by many who have left a land, a home, and a mother. In doing so, her photographic work develops a lyrical journey in exploring the subjects of home, aging, and motherhood.
Her work has been featured in juried exhibitions in various photographic centers and galleries both in the US and internationally. These include The Portrait by Praxis Gallery 2025, Visual Narratives: Photographic Center North West 17th Annual Juried Exhibition, among others.
PROJECT STATEMENT
“In this project I seek to create photographic representations of my mother in China, who has been suffering from schizophrenia for years. These images give visibility to her struggles – dealing with medication, solitude, aging, longing, and anxieties – via a voice that is poetic and intimate. These photos were developed in the past two years that every time I went back, I would take her out of the mental illness hospital and rent a small apartment, our temporary home, to be mother and daughter again. The creation of these images is therefore approached by me as a way to process and question identity, home, and what it means to belong for a woman’s life in mental illness. While these photographs depict her, with all her uniqueness, it also seeks to invoke common feelings experienced by humanities at large.” – Grace Yan
