Yixuan Shao

Based in New York, and born and raised in Tianjin, China, Yixuan Shao was trained as a classical violinist. Upon her immigration to the United States with her family at the age of 15, she began studying improvisation and jazz performance and later received her Bachelor’s degree in Music Composition at UC San Diego. She is a MFA candidate in Sound Art at Columbia University. 

Her musical background,  a mixture of composition and improvisation ----  two connected yet contradicting approaches to music making, urges her to be in constant dialogue with her audience while embracing accidental events in the process of art making. Her works are often open-ended,  or “guided untitled,” inviting the viewer to engage in conversations around the work itself with their own cultural and sociopolitical beliefs. She takes an interest in the longer effect of such a mode of communication, not only taking place in the exhibition/concert space, but also in day-to-day life. 

Yixuan was a 2019-20 artist-in-residence at Arts Letters & Numbers and her research-based sound installation in collaboration with oceanographers and computer engineers was featured in the San Diego Tribute. Yixuan’s works have been performed and shown at Arts Letters & Numbers, Spectrum, Lenfest Center for the Arts, Betalevel, The FRONT Arte Cultura, the Semana Internacional de Improvisación in Ensenada, Mexico, the Athenaeum Art Center, and the Conrad Prebys Music Center.