Yun-Fei Ji utilizes the structures and symbols of folkloric tradition to speak truth to power. Full of phantoms, demons, and other spectral characters, Ji’s paintings have frequently functioned as metaphorical critiques of oppressive power structures—and strategies of defiance. In his ink and watercolor compositions, these ghostly figures are stand-ins for the complex political undercurrents and cultural tug-of-war shaping rural communities in a rapidly developing world.
Ji is inspired by the ghost stories that he first learned growing up in the countryside during the late Chinese Cultural Revolution. He employs the stacked perspective and flattened space of classical Chinese painting to tell contemporary stories that, while geographically specific, speak to a collective human experience. The work often comments on political realities of both US and China, expressed in codes by using metaphor and allusion. There is a satirical streak, and his love of the grotesque is balanced with humor and a deep sense of irony. Each work is an act of resistance, insisting that narratives of displacement and environmental destruction are worth preserving.
Several important bodies of work are rooted in Ji’s fieldwork, exploring communities affected by man-made and natural environmental disasters. These projects often document the involuntary relocations of entire villages to make way for ambitious infrastructure and urbanization projects, as well as the concurrent effects of climate change.
Yun-Fei Ji was born in 1963 in Beijing, China. He earned his BFA from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing and his MFA from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in Fayetteville, Arkansas. In 2005, Ji was Artist-in-residence at Yale University where he conducted extensive research with the institution’s scholars. He received the 2006 American Academy Prix de Rome Fellowship and Residency and was the 2007 Artist-in-residence at the Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art in London. Ji’s work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, including the 2002 Whitney Biennial, the 2011 Lyon Biennale, and the 2012 Biennale of Sydney. Ji’s work is included in the permanent collections of major public institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Asia Society Museum, New York, NY; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; MD; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; British Museum, London, United Kingdom; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Nasher Museum at Duke University, Durham, NC; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT and the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY. Yun-Fei Ji currently lives and works in New York.