About
GAO Ling is a conceptual artist whose interdisciplinary practice incorporates interactive video, performative documentation, and sound installations as triggers for perception. Having lived in London and Shanghai and now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, she explores the subtle and meaningful relations between the body, consciousness, and everyday experience across different cultural contexts.
Her early works focused on the female body, public emotions, and environmental concerns. Selected projects include NvQuan Fountain (LING&COMMA), Hey! TTTTouch Me, and The Big Mist, which investigate collective experience through interactive and participatory formats. During her residencies at PROGRAM (Berlin) and CONTEMPORARY (Hamburg), she developed the experiential project LetOutAYawn, examining the contagion of yawning and the generative state of “doing nothing.”
In recent years, GAO has shifted her attention toward inner states and meditative forms of perception. Works such as KITCHEN, Reflections, LAUGHING, Boiling, Entangled Landscape, and A Zen Utterance, Each transform ordinary moments into practices of concentration, perception, and the flow of consciousness. In her artistic language, conceptual rigor and interactivity coexist and grow together.
Her work has been exhibited at e-flux (New York), MOCA Shanghai, Fujian Art Museum, the UK Chinese Art Biennial, the WYNG Masters Award (Hong Kong), the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, Stanford University, Powerlong Museum, and 500 Capp Street (San Francisco), among others. Her works are collected by museum, institutional, and private collections.
In 2013, she was interviewed by UK Tate Modern Museum, and published on the Tate website.
In 2018, Hey! TTTTouch Me was included in New York critic Barbara Pollack’s landmark book Brand New Art from China: A Generation on the Rise.
About Ling GAO’s artwork
Ling 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 Ling 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.
Ling GAO’s art has been exhibited in museums, art galleries, and international exhibitions, including the New York e flux, Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, Shanghai Power Long Museum, Fujian Art Museum, San Francisco Chinese Culture Center, Edge on the Square SF, the first UK Chinese Art Biennial, Milan Design Week, and more.
Some of Ling GAO's works have been acquired by international art museums and institutions, as well as private collectors, including the Fujian Art Museum, the WYNG Foundation in Hong Kong, and the San Francisco Chinese Culture Center. Ling GAO has also been invited as an artist in residence by various European institutions, such as Program Berlin and Contemporary Hamburg.
Ling GAO is a member of AAWAA—Asian American Women Artists Association.
