Yixi Tian   田一熙 

Yixi Tian (b. 1997, Guiyang) is a visual artist whose practice explores the conditions and sensibilities of individuals within social structures. She approaches photography as a way to come close to, understand, and respond to the experiences of others. Beginning from her relationships with people around her, she develops shared pathways of observation that unfold slowly and attentively, allowing reflections on broader social questions to emerge through coexistence.

Rather than speaking for or representing others, she seeks to generate a perceptible form of connection from within relationships themselves. Her projects often grow out of everyday encounters: entering rural schools through her roommate’s educational concerns, tracing youth music and cultural spaces through a friend’s interests, or approaching Miao healing traditions through her mother’s practice of Chinese medicine. These threads gradually lead her into complex domains such as education, the body, and local knowledge, and they prompt her to reflect on how nearby as a methodological perspective can serve as an entry point into structural issues.

Her visual language moves between the documentary and the metaphorical, extending photography into installation, archival work, and moving image. She is concerned with the fluidity between seeing and being seen, continually experimenting with how to establish an unstable yet genuine relation through images.


Education



St. Joost School of Art&Design                                                  09/2024-Present
MA in Visual Arts and Post-Contemporary Practice
Fudan University                                                                             09/2019-06/2022
MA in Editing and Publishing
Changsha University of Science and Technology                     09/2015-06/2019
BA in Chinese Language and Literature
Exhibitions and Awards
2025
Portraits– Hellerau Photography Exhibition, Dresden, Germany
Rovinj Photodays Exhibition, Third Prize in Portrait Category, Croatia
Rotterdam Photo Festival 2025, Invite artists&Best Photo Award, Netherlands
Eye Filmmuseum ResearchLabs 2025, Most surprising Award, Netherlands

2024
PhMuseum Women Photographers Grant, New Generation Prize Honourable Mention
9th Singapore International Photography Festival, Portfolio Showcase, Singapore
POY Asia 2024 Awards, Winner

2023
Jimei×Arles International Photo Festival, Paper space, Xiamen, China
I Was Glad to Print This Sentence, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China
Imageless Dummy Photobook Awards, Shortlisted

Publications

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Self-published, 2022
Tomorrow will be longer, Self-published, 2023