Cass Yao’s practice begins with the body after intervention. Surgery, hormones, grafting, and now AI-generated anatomical images all enter the body and leave something behind. The body absorbs these changes and carries them forward, taking a new shape each time.
Anatomy, the Western medical language that maps where a body may be cut or corrected, has long decided which changes count as repair. Its maps travel across cultures, yet many people cannot find themselves in them. Now that images of bodies can be generated endlessly and anatomy inferred by algorithm, the question of who gets to read the body grows more pressing.
Yao looks for a different kind of anatomy, one learned from inside. They return often to holes and cavities. In medicine a hole has a function; in older beliefs it was where the soul passed through and where the body met the world. In Yao’s sculptures, openings let pressure shift and material escape. Forms are compressed, stretched, or suspended, caught between growing and giving way. Silicone, epoxy clay, and resin-soaked fabric slowly soften and sag, so the damage keeps happening long after the work is made. Each piece is broken and mended at once, and still leaks past its edges.
