The Collection

Shuyi Cao is a New York–based sculptor and installation artist whose practice explores alchemical approaches to material, matter, and knowledge osmosis. Through archaeological speculation and ecological fiction, she contemplates the porous plurality of relations between sciences, technocultures, mythologies, and cosmologies, traversing enormous and microscopic scales and involving more/less/other-than-human worlds. Combining hand-crafted objects, technological artifacts, and moving images, she creates paradoxical fossils — tangible and intangible — as portals to meditate on geotrauma, transcorporeal ecology, and prehistoric futurity.

Cao grew up in Guangzhou, where her father's dual practice as a Western-trained surgeon who also drew on Chinese medicine and the I Ching shaped her early interest in different systems of knowledge. She initially trained outside the arts, earning a Bachelor of Laws and a master's degree in Public Administration from Fudan University in Shanghai, before relocating to New York in 2016 to pursue an MFA in Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design.

Her making methods synthesize dynamic spatiotemporal configuration and material transformation, from ceramic and glass making with wild clay, sand, mineral, and earth elements to digital fabrication such as 3D printing and virtual environment simulation. Her recent solo exhibitions include Ardor for Unconformity (2024) at the 11th Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine in Quebec and Undercurrent Softness (2023) at the Hive Center for Contemporary Art in Shanghai, alongside group presentations at the Orange County Museum of Art, He Art Museum, Aranya Art Centre, and Today Art Museum. She has held artist residencies at MASS MoCA, New Museum's NEW INC, the Banff Centre for the Arts, Guangdong Times Museum, and the Power Station of Art in Shanghai.

Cao is a visiting assistant professor at Pratt Institute and the founder of Transmaterial Lab. Her work has entered galleries including Alisan Fine Arts and Gathering, and continues to be shown internationally across institutions in the United States, China, and Europe.