chiang yomei | vita

Born in 1961, Taipei, Taiwan, to a Chinese-Russian father and a Chinese-German mother, Yomei studied art and literature at Skidmore College, upstate New York, after a traditional Chinese education in Taiwan. As a child in Taiwan she studied traditional Chinese landscape painting with the contemporary master Hu Nian-Tzu, life drawing with Li Der, and watercolour with Wang Lan. She began writing poetry at the age of ten. Later she moved to Germany to study the German language in Lüneburg and Göttingen. In 1981, she moved again, to England, and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in the History and Theory of Art and English Literature from the University of Kent at Canterbury in 1984. At Kent, Yomei studied under the eminent modern art historian and critic, Dr. Stephen Bann.

After Kent, Yomei continued to pursue the field of art history at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, specialising in Chinese painting and ceramics, studying respectively under the tutelage of Dr. Roderick Whitfield and Dr. Rosemary Scott, both eminent scholars in their fields.

From 1989, Yomei began practising Fine Art in a more concentrated capacity, producing paintings, drawings, collages, photography, installations, performances, poetry, and a collection of short stories. She obtained a Bachelor of Fine Art Degree from Winchester School of Art in 1994. A devoted Buddhist practitioner, she also nurtures a strong interest in spiritual and esoteric philosophies as well as modern physics, the pursuit of which, along with her great love of music have become inextricably linked to her creative work. A multi-media artist, she is currently working on an artist’s book based on her poetry and a multi-media project in Asia, “Crossing”.

Yomei Chiang lives in London with her husband and young daughter. Her work can be found in public and private collections in Europe and Asia.