Jake Yang is a recent graduate of Adelaide Central School of Art, Kaurna Land, Adelaide. He explores various disciplines, notably painting, sculpture, textiles, and installation.
Yang’s art practice explores queer youth culture and the way it sits alongside and intersects with his cultural background, raised in a conservative traditional Chinese culture.
In Yang’s work privacy, intimacy, care, and freedom are celebrated in lush, safe natural environments. He challenges the normative assumptions through an examination of intersecting identities and existing in three very different cultures simultaneously (Chinese, Australian and queer).
His practice explores internal conflict, a sense of fracture as well as the longing for cross- sacredness and celebration of safe spaces.
Yang’s painting practice is influenced by traditional Chinese cultural artefacts and techniques as a means of connecting back to his neglected cultural identity growing up. Exploring queer culture and personal relationships in art is a practice of empowerment, self-development and self-acceptance.