Echo Youyi Yan (b. 2000, Chongqing, China) is a New York based sculptor. She is an MFA Sculpture candidate at the Rhode Island School of Design, and holds a BFA in Studio Art at New York University with a minor in Philosophy. Her practice synthesizes evolutionary biology and eroticism, which allows her to investigate how physical metamorphosis is shaped by transgressive forces during domestication.
Using organic materials and found objects, Yan constructs creature-like forms that are stretching, expanding, shattering, and hovering in states of transmutation. Her visual language draws from museology and taxidermy, critiquing humanity’s obsession with displaying and manipulating both living beings and inanimate objects. Embedded in her works are traces of taming and resistance, intertwined with fragments of intimate narratives shaped by a process that is at once both sadistic and nurturing. Forces of evolution and domestication, dominance and submission, are embodied throughout her recent practice, generating tension and a precarious equilibrium. Her provocative practice invites humans, who have been domesticated, to reflect on their primal desires, corporeal vulnerability, and the paradoxes within their own instincts.
Echo has exhibited her works in a three-person exhibition at Eli Klein Gallery, New York (2024); and has shown at RAINRAIN, New York (2025), Zepster Gallery, Brooklyn (2024); DeCA Foundation, New York(2024); Light Up Globals Project Space, New York (2024); Accent Sisters, Jersey City (2024); theBLANC Art Space, New York (2023); Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York (2023); LATITUDE Gallery, New York (2023); Chambers Fine Art, New York (2023); Stilllife Art Fair, New York (2023); Commons Gallery at New York University, New York (2023); 80WSE Gallery, New York (2023); Rosenberg Gallery at New York University, New York (2023). Her upcoming exhibitions include a duo show at Frisson Gallery, New York (2026); and group shows at The Compound, Baltimore (2025), and Gelman Gallery at the RISD Museum, Providence (2025). Yan has received reviews and interviews from Roundcube Contemporary, Impulse Magazine, and White Hot Magazine, and has given talks at New York University’s BFA Alumni panel.
Echo Youyi Yan currently lives and works in New York.