The queer art of Yan Xing: Towards a global visual language of sex, desire and diaspora

Abstract

This article discusses the work of Yan Xing, who has established an international career as a Chinese diaspora artist. This transnational identity, however, raises certain questions, including how Yan Xing’s work changed from when he lived in China to when he became a US resident in 2015, and how these changes differ from the globalized art of earlier diasporic Chinese artists. Accordingly, this article first argues that overt references in Yan Xing’s earlier work to sex and sexuality shift to an exploration of desire, truth and fiction in his later work that aligns with discourses on queer diasporas and minor theories. Secondly, this article argues that the new generation of Chinese diaspora artists live and work in a different political climate from the earlier generation of Chinese diaspora artists; the new generation works in an art world in which they are not exoticized objects, but actively participates in the making of a global visual language.