gaoyuan 媛
EDUCATION
M.A. Modern and Contemporary Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies, Columbia University in the City of New York
Honours.B.A History of Art and Cinema Studies, University of Toronto (Full-Scholarship)
High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China (RDFZ)
BIO
gaoyuan (b. Beijing, China) is a contemporary art curator and writer based in New York. Embracing the reciprocities between art, film, and music, her work explores poetics and relationalities through inquiries into immersive milieux, cosmic spiritualism, and planetary thinking, manifested in multimedia environments and performances.
Yuan has held positions at museums and galleries in the US, Canada, and China, On the curatorial team of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, she contributed to collection development and acquisition research for the landmark museum. As a curator at Arsenal Contemporary New York, she curated the international group show Theater of Energies (2024) exploring the concept of energy/qi in art, selected as an Artforum Must See. She also authored the experimental catalogue, 3 A.M. Provocations: In Lieu of a Curatorial Statement. At M Woods in Beijing, she assisted in planning five major exhibitions, including large surveys of Man Ray and Bruce Nauman.
Yuan was a Casa Muraro Summer Fellow at the 59th Venice Biennale researching immersive environments in contemporary art, and a Scholar-in-Residence at the Jackman Humanities Institute in Toronto leading an interdisciplinary project on the Malcove Collection at the University of Toronto Art Museum.
She is the recipient of many academic awards and scholarships, including the Moriyama Gold Medal, Mary Coyne Rowell Jackman Graduate Scholarship, Lawrence and Sharon Ho International Scholarship, University of Toronto International Scholar Award, among others.
Her work has appeared on Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, Whitehot Magazine, Artefuse, Impulse Magazine, Screen, Caméra Stylo.