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Artist Bio

Throughout his practice, Jun Yang consistently directs his distinct poetic and imaginative sensibility toward geopolitical and anthropological concerns centered around observations of, and engagements with, everyday life, its infrastructure and superstructure, which the artist himself has described as “metaphors and fables incorporated into clips of collective memories and cycles” His multifaceted projects including writing, sound, performative curation, installations, video, photography, have involved living and working in the notorious Sanhe ‘daily-paid’ job market; commissioning Golden Egg Villagers to produce 'Golden eggs' and ship to a UK exhibition; Placing an inflatable ritual gate and performing with it for two weeks next to Tate Britain; organising multiple trips for urbex enthusiasts to archive and exhibit abandoned and wasted places in Shanghai; monitoring and requiring artists to fill everything in the forms and commissioning art critics to criticise this performative action and the inherent manifesto; and writing articles on art education, art market, changes of social interests and media orientation, and the perspectives of ordinary people amid the fluctuations of economic and political failure.

Born in 1991 in Shanghai, China, Jun Yang originally trained as an derivative broker in the UK, after obtained his Bsc in Finance and MSc in International Transport in Cardiff University. He moved to London in 2014, where he traded shipping options and futures, and engaged in purchase and demolition of vessels. In 2016 he was diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder. It was the confrontation with mental condition and social unrest in the mist of Brexit that inspired his decision to become an artist. Since 2016, the artist’s work has been working on composing new age music collaged with field recordings, folk voices, political speeches and other found samples. He then enrolled in the MA fine art course at Chelsea College, University of Arts London and obtained his degree in 2018, where he began his preliminary research and art practices in a series of contemporary exhibitions and curations.

In 2019, Jun Yang moved to China, where he was born and raised. He carried out a long-term documentary project on the 'Legends of Sanhe', in the notorious Sanhe job market in Shenzhen, where deprived workers were stuck in the daily choices of whether to secure a job, lay down for a few days, sell blood to vendors, or sell identity cards to those bogus companies for bank loans. He faked his own identity and started working as a security personnel at Foxconn(the main electronic parts manufacturer for Apple Inc.). He made friends with local residents, desperate workers, prostitutes, and opened an instagram@sanhe_great_gods updating stories of folk legends around the job market. He made several attempts to commission and pay workers as a daily-paid job to act as themselves in the local OCAT museum, but there was no reply due to political issues. A photo workbook regarding his research in Sanhe was then published and released at UNFOLD artbook fair in 2019. However, the job market does not exist in its previous form, after renovation and refurbishment during recent years.

From 2019 to 2020, Jun became an art mentor in Shanghai at an institution specialised in tutoring portfolios for students who decided to study art abroad in higher education. Abided by standard rules on the universities' websites, and catered to untold tastes of admission reviewers, those portfolios were deliberatly 'manufactured', rather than testimonies and demonstrations of their pracitical research. It was the critical turning point when Jun questioned about the current form of institutional art education, through revisiting and advocating the concept of social-intervened art in his own multi-disciplinary approaches. He co-founded a tube channel which has 120k subscribers now, and worked as the main copywriter. In 2021, Jun co-founded an underground project space in Shanghai called ‘Passing Well’, which was dedicated to provide exhibition opportunities for young artists and community naive artists. There were also organised workshop series under the theme of 'community university', where guest professionals from all backgrounds gave talks and workshops. The project was now transformed into artist studios and accommodations.

In 2022, Jun co-founded 'FlexPrin' as an archival portal which includes his body of work and collaborative curatorial practices. 'FlexPrin' is an independent research entity that combines the idea of event planning, curation, research library and art critique. As both the intervener and mediator, 'Flexprin' covers different voices, opinions and phenomenon in the world, and organises activities and actions to document and embody them in an immersive way.Study and projects curated by 'Flexprin' include 'The Study of Modernology on abandoned complexes' and the corresponding urbex activities and exhibitions, 'Art Critique: A Car Accident' and its derivative exhibition 'Fill in the Forms, Submit it', Fictional novel ‘Tales of People under the Roof' and its XR exhibition at The Roof. 'Roving Foundation Pit' and its museum exhibition proposals. 'Flexprin' now has 5k followers on its openpage and a discussion group consistently debating over current trends rooted in reality.

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