"Becoming Other": Yiou Wang’s Shape-Shifting Worlds at THE BLANC

 “Art is the opening up of the universe to becoming-other.” – Elizabeth Grosz, philosopher

UAAD is thrilled to announce that Yiou Wang, a longtime UAAD collaborator and visionary multimedia artist, presented her first North American solo exhibition, Becoming Other, in February at The Blanc Gallery in New York.

Water Always Goes Where It Wants to Go (2024), Yiou Wang and Alina Tofan, with sound design by Ștefan Blănică. Image Courtesy of the Blanc.

Becoming Other, Feb 15 – Mar 14, 2025

The Blanc Gallery | 15 E 40th Street, New York, NY 10016

An Immersive Exploration of Myth, Technology, and Ecology

At a time when digital and physical worlds are increasingly entangled, Yiou Wang’s first North American solo exhibition, Becoming Other, at THE BLANC offers a meditation on transfiguration, worldbuilding, and the dissolution of self-other boundaries. Yiou Wang—a multimedia artist, designer, and scenographer—has long been interested in creating immersive ecosystems rather than standalone works. Her practice traverses the spaces between mythology, technology, and ecology, constructing ever-evolving narratives that resist traditional artistic categorization.

Worlds That Branch and Multiply

Yiou’s artistic approach is deeply rooted in worldbuilding, an idea borrowed from speculative fiction and game design. But unlike conventional narratives with clear beginnings and endings, her worlds are modular and iterative, resisting closure. The exhibition presents several ongoing multi-year projects, including Water Worlds, Mixanthropy World, and Liquid Painting World.

Exhibition Entrance. Image Courtesy of the Blanc.

Each of these worlds unfolds across different mediums, allowing viewers to encounter them in varying states of evolution. The front space is filled with eight digital prints and seven simultaneously played animations drawn from Soul-Assemblages, Streamborn, and Liquid Paintings. These works are characterized by intricate computational forms and biomorphic abstractions, their textures oscillating between the haunting and the ethereal. Skeletal figures dissolve into mist, crystalline structures pulse with an eerie luminescence, and amorphous landscapes flicker between digital and organic. Yiou's compositions never settle; they remain in a state of perpetual transformation.

The Front space of "Becoming Other." Image Courtesy of the Blanc.

In the immersive space, viewers are confronted with a series of holograms featuring creatures from Mixanthropy, a world where morphing figures defy species classification. Here, identity is rendered fluid, porous, and unstable, echoing the way mythological beings have long shapeshifted across cultures. The experience is further heightened by Yiou’s use of performance capture and voice acting, layering movement and sound into these spectral beings.

Mixanthropy: Animorphosis (2022-25), Yiou Wang and Meichun Cai. Image Courtesy of the Blanc.

As visitors move deeper into the exhibition, they enter the worlds of Water and Co-Life/Co-Demise, where surreal landscapes unfold—dripping with vaporous textures, fractal decay, molten minerals, and cosmic formations. These forms are ephemeral yet forceful, engaging with ecological thought and digital aesthetics in equal measure. Yiou invites viewers to contemplate the ways in which digital bodies and environments can parallel the precarious, constantly shifting states of our natural world.

Co-Life/Co-Demise Chapters 1-3 (2024), Yiou Wang and Hsiao-Chu Hsia. Image Courtesy of the Blanc.

The Mythology of Becoming

What makes Becoming Other so compelling is its rejection of binary thinking. Yiou challenges Western hegemonic concepts of identity, selfhood, and alterity, instead proposing a vision where distinctions dissolve: between human and nonhuman, self and environment, ancient and future.

This thematic core is particularly present in the concept of "becoming", which Yiou sees as a transfigurative process rather than a fixed state. Drawing from mythology, she suggests that the act of becoming is both physical and metaphysical, encompassing morphing bodies, digital retargeting, and the invisible, unnameable transformations that elude representation. The “others” in Wang’s work—her mythic figures, digital ghosts, and speculative creatures—are not alien intrusions but essential parts of a larger, interconnected whole. As she suggests, Earth’s so-called “aliens” are our ancestors, our caretakers, and the forces that sustain us.

The exhibition also raises critical questions about the politics of perception. In a world where otherness is often met with fear, Yiou asks us to consider: What if we embraced the fluidity of identity? What if, instead of fearing the Other, we recognized our entanglement with it?

Please join us in experiencing this transformative and enchanted forest and journey with us through

Yiou Wang imagination-sparkling worlds. Becoming Other opens on February 15th at THE BLANC’s East 40th Street location. The exhibition will be open to the public from 11 am to 6 pm Wednesday through Saturday.