ABOUT ME

Jiayi Yu is a London-based visual artist born in Shenzhen, China. Her work moves through video, scanner-based imagery, installation, and drawing—exploring the emotional terrain of touch, absence, and queer embodiment. Often beginning with the body and ending somewhere more abstract, her practice captures not what is seen, but what is felt and remembered.

Treating the scanner as a tactile instrument rather than a visual one, she renders images that behave like skin—bearing marks, distortions, and traces of intimacy. These gestures speak to the poetics of distance: the ache of almost-touching, the silence between presence and longing.

Yu’s work has been shown internationally in cities like Paris, London, Lecce, Los Angeles and more, across solo and group exhibitions in both physical and digital spaces. Trained at the Royal College of Art and the London College of Communication, she situates her voice within the UK’s post-digital and queer media landscape.

Her images do not demand to be seen—they ask to be felt.
They whisper, touch me, and linger long after the screen fades.