Yijia Wu 吴釴佳

Yijia Wu @ikeeabug is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, installation, and performance. Her practice explores home, memory, and migration through the emotional, cultural, and material significance of everyday objects. Using stone carving, soap, and at times metal casting, she constructs and deconstructs forms as a way of thinking through displacement, attachment, and the shifting nature of belonging. . Drawing from experiences of living between places, Wu is interested in the tensions between solidity and fragility, permanence and dissolution, intimacy and estrangement. Familiar domestic forms often appear in her work, reconfigured to create situations that feel absurd yet familiar, nostalgic yet present. . Through material transformation and fragmented narrative, each work becomes a way of making sense of what resists easy explanation. Together, her works function like puzzle pieces, weaving a larger image of home as something fluid, unsettled, and continuously re-formed. . 𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐆𝐚𝐳𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 . 📅 on view till 20 May 🕙 Tue-Sat, 11am-7pm . @gaiaartspace 📍 2101, Landmark South, 39 Yip Kan Street, Wong Chuk Hang, Hong Kong . #gaiaartspace #hk #contemporaryart #wongchukhang artgallery

𝑮𝒂𝒛𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒐 𝑬𝒗𝒂𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆: WU Yijia’s Soap Sculptures and the Traces of Time @ikeeabug . WU Yijia’s hand-carved soap sculptures are among the most time-sensitive works in the exhibition. Soap is a material destined to disappear—gradually wearing away with every touch and every passing breath of air. Shaped by the artist’s hands into delicate forms, it nonetheless continues its quiet transformation, ultimately dissolving into foam. . In this way, the sculptures enter into a subtle dialogue with the history of South Gazing Mountain. The brick kilns have vanished, the walled villages have relocated, and the mountain’s name itself has shifted—from ‘South Gazing’ to ‘Nam Long’, and eventually to the English ‘Brick Hill’. Like the soap itself, these histories reveal a landscape in constant flux. . Yet the ephemerality of these sculptures is not a cause for sorrow. Rather, it suggests a ritual of cleansing—an act of quiet renewal. It reminds us that beauty resides precisely in the fleeting moment before it disappears. . 📅 on view till 20 May 🕙 Tue-Sat, 11am-7pm . @gaiaartspace 📍 2101, Landmark South, 39 Yip Kan Street, Wong Chuk Hang, Hong Kong . #gaiaartspace #hk #contemporaryart #wongchukhang #artgallery

WU Yijia’s @ikeeabug hand-carved soap sculptures are among the most time-sensitive works in the exhibition. Soap is a material destined to disappear—gradually wearing away with every touch and every passing breath of air. Shaped by the artist’s hands into delicate forms, it nonetheless continues its quiet transformation, ultimately dissolving into foam. . 📅 on view till 20 May 🕙 Tue-Sat, 11am-7pm . @gaiaartspace 📍2101, Landmark South, 39 Yip Kan Street, Wong Chuk Hang, Hong Kong . #gaiaartspace #hk #wongchukhang #contemporaryart #artgallery

Yijia Wu (b. 1997, China) is a London-based multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, installation and performance. Her practice explores memory, migration and the shifting notion of “home,” using everyday objects and domestic materials such as soap, stone and metal to examine emotional experiences of displacement and belonging. Drawing from personal experiences, Wu transforms familiar objects into poetic forms that balance permanence and fragility. Her works often unfold through processes of construction and deconstruction, reflecting home as an evolving and embodied condition rather than a fixed place. Wu graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2021 and completed her MA in Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art in 2023. She is currently an artist in residence at @sarabandefoundation . #contemporaryart #visualart #sculpture #artiststudio #artistinterview

We recently had the pleasure of visiting Yijia Wu’s studio @sarabandefoundation in North London, where we spent a full day discussing her practice and sources of inspiration. From paradoxical and everyday material to the influence of her Chinese heritage, Yijia guided us through the ideas and meanings behind each of her sculptures. The full interview will be out on the 14th April. Don’t miss it! #contemporaryart #visualart #sculpture #artiststudio #artistinterview

Studio update🪨 Two weeks ago, I received a new slab of alabaster. Here are some moments from the process of unpacking, washing, and preparing the stone before carving, not so different from cooking a fish 🐟

🪨🍐Some behind-the-scenes moments from this year’s One Pear a Year project, Pear-ed, currently showing with @houseofbandits_ at Collect Art Fair, Somerset House.

Excited to share that I will be showing my 2026 One Pear a Year project Pear-ed with @houseofbandits_ at @collectartfair in Somerset House House of Bandits presents a curated presentation of works at Collect - the leading international art fair for contemporary craft and design taking place in the stunning setting of Somerset House, London, from 27 February - 1 March. DATES: Collectors‘ Preview 25 Feb (by invitation only) Preview 26 Feb TIMES:  Thu 26 Feb - 11am–9pm Fri 27 Feb - 11am–8pm Sat 28 Feb - 11am–6pm Sun 1 Mar - 11am–5pm The presentation brings together works across design, fine jewellery and sculpture by award-winning Sarabande alumni and our new cohort of artists-in-residence, exploring craft as a living artistic language that challenges convention. @collectartfair @houseofbandits_ @sarabandefoundation @craftscouncil

Excited to have my work showing at @echosoho with @houseofbandits_ by @sarabandefoundation , a female led art fair featuring galleries led by women. 🎶 🗓️: 16th-19th October 🏠: Artists House, 14 Manette Street, Soho, W1D 4AW

Coming Soon to Echo Soho (@echosoho ): Sculptures crafted with alabaster stone and a brass leaf from the Pears series by artist Yijia Wu (@ikeeabug ). The Pears series explores cultural symbolism within Wu’s heritage. In Chinese culture, sharing a pear is considered symbolic of separation, due to the homophonic link between “pear” (梨) and “separate” (离). The use of stone embodies the impossibility of sharing whilst the brass spoon stem visually invites it in quiet contradiction. As members of the artist’s family began living in different countries, the work evolved. By cutting the pear into halves, she echoes the current distance and shifting relationships within her family, turning the sculpture into both a marker of separation and a gesture of togetherness. Explore works by Yijia Wu now on our website: link in bio 🔗 Echo Soho is an art fair founded by and for female-led galleries amplifying their influence in contemporary art in the heart of London’s Soho, opening 16th October. Tickets available now at 🎟 __ House of Bandits is a gallery by Sarabande Foundation (@sarabandefoundation ) housing unique and limited-edition works by artists-in-residence and alumni. All purchases directly support the foundation, the artists and future generations of creatives.

New stone-carved works from my Keys from Home series ✨ Alongside them is my first stone dust drawing, Oops, it’s locked (image 1), and new stone pieces, Fallen Pear, Un(pear) (image 2). Grateful to be showing these works at @caimatslane until 30 September, beautifully curated by @jenncellis and @liu.matilda 🤍

🕊️ Yijia at her studio pt2 💡