Catalina Ouyang
Catalina Ouyang (b. 1993, Chicago) lives and works in New York. Ouyang's work spans sculpture, video, installation, performance, and mixed media, situated in a framework of revisionist storytelling that resists essentialist metrics for navigating social space. Rather than engaging language directly, they work with the visualization, rhythm, and texture of language, confronting its limitations and the power relations embedded in space and speech. Their sculptures often integrate carved stone, plaster, found objects, and organic materials, drawing on cross-cultural myths and carrying an intentional violence and sexuality that gestures toward trauma, grief, and transformation.
Ouyang holds an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University. Solo exhibitions include Trick, Lyles & King, New York (2024); Afterimage, No Place Gallery, Columbus (2024); forgive everything, Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); White Male Ally, Lyles & King, New York (2021); it has always been the perfect instrument, Knockdown Center, Queens (2020); marrow, Make Room, Los Angeles (2019); fish mystery in the shift horizon, Rubber Factory, New York (2019); and DEATH DRIVE JOY RIDE, Make Room, Los Angeles (2018).
Group exhibitions include 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield (2022); In Practice: You may go, but this will bring you back at SculptureCenter, New York (2021); Death Becomes Her at BRIC, Brooklyn (2020); the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (2020); and Asia Art Center, Taipei (2021). Ouyang was the 2021 Artist in Residence at MASS MoCA, with previous residencies including Smack Mellon, Shandaken: Storm King, the NARS Foundation, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the OBRAS Foundation. Their work has been covered in Artforum, Flash Art, Hyperallergic, Cultured, Office Magazine, and Artnet News.
Selected Works
crisis management (invocation of losses counted, suckers had), 2019
marble, plaster, symbiotic colonies of bacteria and yeast, abandoned chair, steel rebar, weaver’s cloth
63 x 17 x 17 in 160 x 43.2 x 43.2 cm / 160 x 43.2 x 43.2 cm
font VII, 2021
soapstone, raw egg, white vinegar, stop loss trap, horse hair, binder, plaster, pigment, beeswax, epoxy clay, gauze, kombucha mothers, paper
6 x 15 x 9 in 15.2 x 38.1 x 22.9 cm / 15.2 x 38.1 x 22.9 cm
yoke of thyself, 2019
white ribbed tank, tattoo ink, blood, symbiotic colonies of bacteria and yeast, stones
61 x 8 x 4 in 154.9 x 20.3 x 10.2 cm / 154.9 x 20.3 x 10.2 cm
all those years later there was nothing in there but dead squirrels and trapped heat, it felt like salvation, 2019
alabaster
4 x 8 x 11 in (torso), 8 x 4 1/2 x 4 in (fist) 10.2 x 20.3 x 27.9 cm, 20.3 x 11.4 x 10.2 cm / 10.2 x 20.3 x 27.9 cm
crisis management (filling the space with syllables waiting for something to pass) , 2019
soapstone, plaster, symbiotic colonies of bacteria and yeast, abandoned chair, steel rebar, weaver’s cloth
58 x 16 1/2 x 16 in 147.3 x 41.9 x 40.6 cm
Evil, 2019
soapstone, plaster, pigment, shellac, mirror
12 x 16 x 8 in 30.5 x 40.6 x 20.3 cm / 30.5 x 40.6 x 20.3 cm
crisis management (sometimes all it needs is to be convinced), 2019
marble, plaster, symbiotic colonies of bacteria and yeast, abandoned chair, steel rebar, weaver’s cloth
66 x 16 x 18 in 167.6 x 40.6 x 45.7 cm / 167.6 x 40.6 x 45.7 cm
crisis management (P[erseus] came for the holes), 2019
alabaster, plaster, symbiotic colonies of bacteria and yeast, abandoned chair, steel rebar, weaver’s cloth
64 x 18 1/2 x 19 in 162.6 x 47 x 48.3 cm
Exhibitions & Projects
Evening Shadow
Desire Encapsulated
marrow
DEATH DRIVE JOY RIDE
