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Wendi Yan (b. 1999, Beijing) constructs speculative epistemologies through research-based worldbuilding, using CGI, game engines, and documentary practices to interrogate the boundaries of scientific imagination. Her work—spanning films, interactive media, and fictional archival installations—examines the embodied challenges of facing alien epistemic systems across time. Operating at the convergence of artistic experimentation and philosophical inquiry, Wendi’s practice reconfigures scientific artifacts as speculative fictions: she models impossible instruments, animates epistemological creatures, and engineers virtual environments governed by counterfactual logics.
Wendi collaborates frequently with scientists and engineers, from synthetic biology to astrophysics, to explore the frontier between science and entertainment, between imaging and imagining. Parallel to her studio work, Yan writes on the history and future of scientific discovery; her research on artemisinin, published by Asimov Press, was named “Best of Journalism” by The Syllabus.
Wendi has or will exhibit at Ars Electronica Festival (Linz), House of Electronic Arts (Basel), Samsung Vision Hall (Seoul), Hyundai Motorstudio (Beijing), Singapore Art Week, NEW INC (New York), TANK Shanghai, X Museum (Virtual), and Slash (San Francisco). She has spoken at the Gray Area Festival, Rhizome World, Trust, SeedAI x SXSW and Skywalker Ranch. Residencies include Eyebeam and the Arctic Circle Artist & Scientist Expedition. Her work has been published by WeTransfer, Wallpaper and Coeval Magazine. She has completed multiple art commissions for the Berggruen Institute, including a film project on the search for life in the clouds of Venus by MIT scientists.
Currently based between New York and San Francisco, Wendi is a NEW INC Y11 member in Creative Science, and a finalist for the 6th VH Award by Hyundai Motor Group. Her latest work---a CGI film on alternative Enlightenment history---will premiere at Art Basel in June 2025.
Wendi holds an A.B. in History of Science from Princeton University, where she won the Horace H. Wilson ’25 Senior Thesis Prize in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology, and a M.S. in Fiction and Entertainment from SCI-Arc. She was an inaugural member of the Steve Jobs Archive Fellowship (2023), created by Laurene Powell Jobs to support young creators between technology and liberal arts.
CV
Headshots [1] [2] by Jessica Chou