Michaela Yearwood-Dan: RECESS
Longlati
For her first solo exhibition in China, British artist Michaela Yearwood-Dan presents RECESS, a new body of work that unfolds through gesture, rhythm, and reflection. The title suggests both a pause and a space—a moment of withdrawal that allows for renewal and a physical depth carved into surface and time.
In RECESS, painting becomes a state of breath. Yearwood-Dan tilts, pours, and layers pigment directly onto canvas stretched across vast frames, and onto voile for smaller, more intimate works, allowing colour to flow and settle like water seeking form. These gestures—at once deliberate and instinctive—evoke the fluidity and discipline found in traditional Chinese calligraphy and movement practices such as Tai Chi, where stillness and motion coexist in harmony.
The artist describes her process as “a dance with the canvas,” a choreography guided by gravity, intuition, and emotion. Her palette—golds, reds, jade greens, blacks, and deep blues—carries symbolic echoes of Chinese culture yet remains filtered through her personal, global vocabulary. Yearwood-Dan reflects here on interconnectedness. As a Black British artist working within the lineage of Western abstraction, she enters into dialogue with Chinese visual tradition through resonance rather than imitation: “It’s about how certain colours and gestures already live in our collective imagination.”
The artist intuitively references theories of Ying and Yang and the Five elements (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water)—cornerstones of Chinese metaphysics. The Wu Xing cycle illustrates how each element gives birth to the next: Wood fuels Fire, Fire creates Earth, Earth generates Metal, Metal purifies Water, and Water nourishes Wood—organically shaping the aesthetics of life’s cyclical balance that echo through her compositions.
Artist
Michaela Yearwood-Dan
Exhibition Date
11 November 2025 - 7 February 2026
Venue
Suhe Haus 4F, 30 Wen'an Road, Jing'an District, Shanghai