Sun Yitian born in 1991, Wenzhou, China, completed high school at the Fine Art School Affiliated to the Central Academy of Fine Arts(CAFA), graduated from the Painting Department of the CAFA, Beijing, in 2015, and received her MFA in 2018. She is currently completing a Doctor of Literature at the School of Humanities, Tsinghua University, Beijing, where she lives and works. Working across painting, installation, performance, and fashion, Sun employs material objects as metaphors for labor and production, revealing the inner mechanisms of contemporary consumer society.
Sun was named to Forbes China Influential Contemporary Young Artists 2023 and Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia (Class of 2019). She has received the BBart Awards 2024 Young Artist Award, the WSJ China On the Field Creator of the Year Award, and the BOB Best of the Best 2022 Young Artist Award, and was nominated for the K11 Artist Prize. Her work has been exhibited at galleries including BANK/MABSOCIETY, Esther Schipper, as well as at major institutions and venues such as the Grand Palais, Lion Palace, Museum Voorlinden, National Art Museum of China, West Bund Museum, UCCA Edge.
Her works are held in public and private collections including the Hort Family Collection, New York; White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney; Museum Voorlinden, Hague; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Asymmetry Art Foundation, London; Louis Vuitton, Paris; Tanoto Art Foundation, Singapore; New Century Foundation, Hong Kong; De Ying Foundation, Shanghai; Forbes China, Shanghai; By Art Matters, Hangzhou; Taikang Art Museum, Beijing, Song Art Museum, Beijing; Longlati Foundation, Shanghai; Long Museum, Shanghai; The Cloud Collection, Nanjing; Pond Society, Shanghai; M WOODS, Beijing; Yuz Museum, Shanghai; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing; ZHI Foudation, Beijing.
Recent exhibitions include Romantic Room, Esther Schipper, Berlin(2025); The Life of Things, Museum Voorlinden, The Hague (2025); A Cloud in Trousers: Painting Today, West Bund Museum, Shanghai (2024); One and All: New Artistic Styles of Contemporary Painting, National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2024); Boundless Reverie: Chinese Savoir-Faire and Contemporary Art, K11 MUSEA, Hong Kong (2024); Once Upon a Time, Esther Schipper, Paris (2023); Bordercrossing: Possibilities and Interactions, Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2023); Projection, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing (2023); Nián Nián: The Power and Agency of Animal Forms, Deji Art Museum, Nanjing (2023); The Infinite Conversation: 2022 Beijing Biennial “Symbiosis”, National Base for International Cultural Trade, Beijing (2022); The Pieces I Am, UCCA Edge, Shanghai (2022); Art’s Language, Artists’ Game, OCAT Shenzhen (2022); and The Disconnected Generation, Song Art Museum, Beijing (2022).
