About
GAO Ling is a conceptual artist who has lived in London and Shanghai and is currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Working across disciplines, she treats interactive video, performance documentation, sound installation, and painting as triggers for perception—examining the subtle and meaningful relationships between the body, consciousness, and everyday experience.
Her early representative works NvQuan Fountain, Hey! TTTTouch Me, and The Big Mist，use participation and interaction to explore individual and collective experience. In her experiential project LetOutAYawn, she tests the “contagiousness” of yawning and the state of “doing nothing,” guiding participants into encounters with thought, unconscious response, and quasi-meditative presence.
In recent years, GAO has shifted toward investigating interior experience. KITCHEN, Reflections, and her collaborative projects with artist Michael Zheng—A Zen Utterance, Each and Tellurian Zen—focus on quotidian moments and micro-gestures.
Her work has been presented at e-flux, Shanghai MOCA, 1st Chinese Contemporary Art Biennial in the UK, Fujian Art Museum, Hong Kong WYNG Foundation, Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, Stanford University, Shanghai Powerlong Museum, and 500 Capp Street Foundation(SF), among others. Her works are held in museum, institutional, and private collections.
2013 Featured by Tate Modern Museum in Contemporary Chinese Women Artists and published on Tate’s official website
2013 Hey! TTTTouch Me was analyzed by art historian Alpesh Kantilal Patel and published in YISHU: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art
2013 The Big Mist was shortlisted for the WYNG Foundation AIR Master Photography Prize (HK)
2018 Hey! TTTTouch Me was included in New York art critic Barbara Pollack’s book, Brand New Art from China: A Generation on the Rise
2022 NvQuan Fountain was included in Dr. Monica Merlin’s book Women, Activism and the Arts: Visual Practices in the 21st Century
2023 GAO invited to Stanford University to speak on Art as a Tool for Environmental Justice
About GAO’s artwork
GAO’s artwork directly responds to the most urgent issues in society and everyday life, as seen in works such as Hey!TTTTouch Me and The Big Mist.
The interactivity of many of GAO’s artwork transforms the creative process into a process of creation. These works evolve and ferment over time, driven by audience interaction, giving rise to new events and works, such as NvQuan, Curve Restaurant, and LetOutAYawn.
Some of GAO's works have been collected by international art museums and institutions, as well as private collectors, including the Fujian Art Museum, Hong Kong WYNG Foundation, and San Francisco Chinese Culture Center. GAO has also been invited as an artist in residence by various European institutions, such as Program Berlin and Contemporary Hamburg.
GAO is a member of AAWAA—Asian American Women Artists Association.
