Chaney Diao

🪽🖤✨ « How To Destroy Angels » opens: Friday 8th Nov - 7-9pm at @thehorsehospital Artist Focus: @chaney_dms Programmed by @taishani & A—-Z Chaney Manshu Diao (b.1996, China) is an artist whose practice revolves around desire, fetishism, and (sexual) fantasy. Frequently described as both erotic and hardcore, Chaney’s work engages with the physical and theoretical conceptions of violence, intensity, and the ‘on edge’ moments in BDSM. These elements are explored to reflect broader ideas of maintenance, production, and cultural drive, set against the backdrop of today’s accelerated consumption of cultural forms. Recent group shows include: Acal Festival 3 curated by Studio/Chapple; Pretty Doomed Art fair with Queer Art Project, and Chaney has live performed at IKLETIK, Oct 2023. Chaney’s conceptual approach to art and identity has been featured by magazines including Nasty Magazine, i-D, Numero, Vogue, BoF, WWD, French Fries Magazine, Schon Magazine

Clamp. Proud to share this ongoing series sculptures studies foam/form and pressure in reflecting techno culture. Currently on show at the group show “the wall that’s not innocent, unless…” curated by @bowoeee_9 @kinsman_imal

Dysfunctioned Dec 2, Sheet latex, liquid latex, PVC pipes, faulty DJ decs, RCA cables 180 x 60 x 15 cm 🦾🦿👣 New variation of the latex sculpture series that’s just been displayed at the 3rd edition of ACall festival curated by @studio.chapple and @sons_of_craft hosted by @staffordshirest Flip to the end for some install looks from the show. Thank you so much for those who made it in person and thank you for Louis and Ade for having me xx Install images from the show @studio_adamson

Soooo happy to finally share a video from my studio visit with Chaney @chaney_dms back in February 🖤 A small sneak peek into their practice as we discuss the role of repetitiveness and endurance, and how the physical body manifests itself within the work. Artworks featured: 1. OCCLUDE (2023), interactive VR game. Made in collaboration with Freddie Sanders @f_sanders_ . 2. Threshold, mixed-media installation, 2023. 3. Installation views of ‘headspace’, 2025.

Been super prolific and LIVING… HARD! This is all I have GIVEn for the first quarter of 2026! 1. WIP of latest multi-media project in mind 2. WIP of the same project as 1. 3. Cooking for @piccalilli.gallery 4. Re/mix of the Jan byyb set with a bday recording diary. Very confessional. @byyb.radio 5. Re/mix of the Jan byyb set @byyb.radio 6. Crop of bday photo taken by the SUPER TALENT @jdyevns 7. Another bday photo taken by @jdyevns - obsessed 8. Some “crazy” thoughts after the breath-taking night @screwed.zine launch, Edited by @jean_device69 9. More thoughts on the @screwed.zine launch @jean_device69 . Ultimate gratitude - thanks for making my life worth living ❤️‍🔥 10. More WIP 11. More Re/mix

Here’s some documentation of my new works on view at @hyphastudios until 17 Jan 2026. ——— This new series continues the sculpture-poetry experiment I began in May this year, bringing together text, material, and vague shapes arranged to form a reflective environment shaped by proximity. Drawing on a feeling of approximation associated with the aftermath of intimate encounters, the installation holds a softened state where desire, closeness, and vulnerability linger. Thank you to @rachmortlock and @indiastanbra for including me.

I don’t usually share too much personal news on instagram, but today is a very special moment. This girl has been in the UK for 11 years and its finally settled!! Endless Thank You to everyone who helped on this one and to my mom. This is just the beginning of a lot more fun and I’m so happy this transitional, admin-heavy summer is finally coming to the end x 🤍

Mute, 2025 Photopolymer resin, Aerosol acrylic spray paint, LED Screen. Currently on view as part of Knotted Timeline - duo show with @jgrab_ at @seagergallery

In and Out of Sync, 2025 Polylactic Acid, Aerosol Acrylic Paint, Acrylic Sheet, Aluminium, LED light. This work is currently on view @seagergallery until 14 June as part of Knotted Timeline, a duo show w Juliusz Grabianski (@jgrab_ )

Thanks @yac_interviews @davidmcleavy_ for featuring this extra special conversation w @zhuyangleiu . Been friends for years, we finally had the chance to chat on the common grounds both our practice grows upon. 💙💙💙 All those hot studio pics are shot by Zhuyang too. 💀

Feeling ultimately thrilled to have opened Knotted Timeline - a dual show with @jgrab_ at Seager gallery @seagergallery last night with my new series of sculptural pieces under the bigger title of Headspace. Thank you to everyone who made it to the private view ❤️ The show is now open. Opening hours are 2 - 5pm, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays until 14 June x Image 1. Headspace install view Image 2. I was in the chair position tied and wired to an excessive black hook at the centre top of my bed. A spot lights the room as if the backstage of a porn, I gaze into it. With my feet high up in the air I can feel the blood withdraws from my extremities - feeling cold, pain, then numbness. I beg for a STOP.  “You fucking hold it otherwise im not gonna do this for you again.” She said, This life is not an erotic fiction. No safe words, no limitation, no weekends, 24/7, no holidays, no vacations; no cages, no whips, no kisses. Punishment for real. To live, to anticipate, to endure., 2025

Introducing Chaney Diao(@chaney_dms ) - artist for our upcoming duo show Knotted Timelines with Juliusz Grabianski (@jgrab_ ) , opens Thursday 29 May, 6-9 PM. Chaney will be presenting a new sculptural installation Headspace - combining 3D-printed forms, assembled objects, and structured light. Headspace drifts through a zone where objects hover between formation and fixation. Rendered in a subdued, universal grey, the works borrow from the spatial logic of modeling software and speculative environments, gesturing toward architectures not yet fully settled. Desires will be looked at in the gaps between surface and suggestion, scaffold and skin, objects and objectification. ___________ Chaney Diao is a London-based artist whose practice is situated at the intersection of desire, labor, and mediated aesthetics. Her work explores how desire manifests as a tension between submission and agency — where pleasure, overload, and burnout emerge not as outcomes but as sustained aesthetic and conceptual conditions. She is interested in how identities and affective capacities are shaped under pressure: to perform, to become, to remain legible within accelerated cultural systems. Recent exhibitions include Kaugummi im Motherboard curated by Erratum Gallery at gr_und, Berlin; How to Destroy Angels curated by Tai Shani and A–Z (Anne Duffau) at Horse Hospital, London; FAN の BLOG 迷妹の部屋 at Asymmetry Art Foundation, London; todestrieb [death drive] at Generation & Display, London; Acal Festival 3 curated by Studio/Chapple; and Pretty Doomed Art Fair with Queer Art Project. She has also performed live at IKLETIK, London (2023). Chaney’s conceptual approach to art and identity has been featured in publications including Nasty Magazine, i-D, Numéro, Vogue, BoF, WWD, French Fries Magazine, and Schön Magazine #seagergallerylondon #deptford #digitalart #whattodoinlondon #southeastlondongallery