yixiwan@outlook.com
Instagram:@yixivan
ABOUT
Yixi Wan (b. 1998, China) is a lens-based visual artist and researcher based in Toronto. Working primarily with photography—alongside video, performance, and installation—her practice explores the emotional and cultural dimensions of memory, identity, and displacement.
With academic roots in Chinese Literature (Sichuan University) and an MA in Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies (University of Toronto), Yixi approaches image- making as both poetic inquiry and embodied reflection. Her work draws on lived experiences of migration and cultural dislocation, while also engaging with the longer legacies of colonialism and collective forgetting.
She is particularly interested in how personal and inherited memory inhabits the photographic surface. Using experimental techniques such as cyanotype, gum bichromate, and mordançage, Yixi creates tactile, time-worn images that register both erosion and resilience. Through these material interventions, she examines how the transformation of place, identity, or medium can hold space for empathy and quiet resistance.
Yixi’s ongoing research investigates how visual works adapt across cultures and formats, and how reinterpretation enables connection between otherwise distant histories. Her photographs often operate as containers for fragile narratives, inviting viewers into contemplative environments where presence and absence quietly overlap.
EDUCATION
*EXPERIMENTAL PHOTO FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION, SPAIN / ONLINE 2025 – ONGOING
Diploma in Experimental Photography
*UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, CANADA，2020 — 2021
MA, Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies
*SICHUAN UNIVERSITY (SCU) CHINA, 2016 — 2020
BA, Chinese Language and Literature
【EXHIBITION】
*Hart House Camera Club 103rd Annual Exhibition of Photography,
Toronto,Canada
Mar.19—Apr.30, 2025
*CITY BUILDING 2025,
Gallery 1313,
Toronto, Canada
May 14–25, 2025
*(Upcoming) Almanac,
Gallery 44,
Toronto, Canada
July 17–August 1, 2025
【AFFILIATION】
*Gallery 44, Member (2024 - )
【PERFORMING ARTS】 (SELECTED)
*Grad Lab Project:An Adaptation of The Tempest, University of Toronto
(Writer, Director, Filming, Editing,
Translation, and Subtitles)
Dec. 2020 – May 2021
*Oral History Documentary:
Dali County: Jujube Stories, China
(Director, Filming, and Editing)
2019
*Reader Theatre Adaptation of
The Sorrow of Young Werther,
Sichuan University
(Co-translator, Co-writer, Dramaturg & Set)
Mar. 2018 – May 2018
OTHER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
*SCREENWRITER INTERN
CHENGDU HUABANG CULTURE & MEDIA CO. LTD
Chengdu, China
Sep.2016 — June 2018
*WEB CONTENT EDITOR
DEALMOON GROUp
PERMANENT FULL-TIME
Toronto, Canada
Apr.2022 — June 2023
*Mitacs Globalink Graduate Fellowship,
CAN,2020 - 2021
*University of Toronto
Faculty of Arts and Science Graduate Fellowship,
CAN,2020 - 2021
*University of Toronto,
Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies
Graduate Program Award,
CAN,2020
*Mitacs Globalink Research Award (Top 100 worldwide),
CAN,2019
*Provincial Merit Project Prize in Project Entrepreneurship,
CHN,2018
*Taiwan Exchange Scholarship,
Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China,
CHN,2018 - 2019
*University Merit Scholarship,
CHN,2017 & 2018
ACADEMIC PORTFOLIO(SELECTED)
*Research Intern Augustana - Fine Arts & Humanities,
University of Alberta
July 2019 – Oct.2019
*Mitacs Globalink summer internship with Professor Roxanne Harde,
researching date rape narratives from YA novels.
*Collected and researched Chinese date rape narratives
from novels, articles, and news reports.
*Wrote annotations about research materials.
*Received $6,000 funding from CSC (China Scholarship Council).
*Innovation Research Program at SCU
Provincial Innovative and Entrepreneurship Project Lead
Sept. 2017 – May 2019
* Conducted research on the contemporary development and future potential of
Chinese modern poetry based on the poetry of Lisuo.
* Led a team of five and built an online sharing platform to
encourage college students to write, share, and appreciate poetry.
* Hosted live poetry conference panels for students to share their critiques and works.
* Collected and compiled a poetry collection by university students
titled An Explanation of Pain.
* Won the Provincial Merit Project prize in Project Entrepreneurship in 2018.