Zhao Yao

Born in 1981 in Sichuan. Lives and works in Beijing. Working across a wide range of media, including painting, installation, photography, video, and performance, Zhao adopts an approach that keenly examines epistemology, perception, everyday life, and institutional frameworks. By bridging everyday experience and artistic experience, his work investigates how perception and meaning take shape, offering viewers perceptual and conceptual experiences that invite a rethinking of the familiar.

Recent exhibitions include the 59th Carnegie International If the World We (Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, USA, 2026), By and by it unfolds and then folds. (Fosun Foundation, Shanghai, China, 2025) the Thailand Biennale 2025 (Phuket, Thailand, 2025), IT’S ORDINARY, BUT... (Ota Fine Arts Tokyo/ 7CHOME, Tokyo, 2025), Signals from Heaven, Signals from Heaven (Beijing Commune, Beijing, China, 2018), and A Painting of Thought (Pace Gallery, Hong Kong, 2015), among others.