Contemporary Artist
Tan Siyuan
Contemporary Artist
Manchu Artist · Based in Ningbo and New York
Working across sculpture, painting, and ceramics, Tan Siyuan connects historical subjects with cross-cultural narratives through a visual language that moves between figuration and abstraction.
View Available Works
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About the Artist
Tan Siyuan is a Manchu artist who lives and works between Ningbo and New York. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Sculpture from Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts and an MFA in Sculpture from Savannah College of Art and Design.
He has presented solo exhibitions at Chambers Fine Art in New York in 2022 and LATITUDE Gallery in New York in 2021. His work has also been exhibited at the Dunhuang Contemporary Museum of Art in Shanghai, Today Art Museum in Beijing, Xi’an Art Museum, Woodstock Artists Association & Museum in New York, Marietta Cobb Museum of Art in Georgia, Trenton Museum in New Jersey, Indianapolis Art Center, and Palazzo Velli EXPO in Rome.
Tan has participated in art fairs including The Armory Show and West Bund Art & Design. He has received support from the Kiwanis Hope Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. His works have also entered museum, corporate, and private collections.
Education
BFA in Sculpture, Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts
MFA in Sculpture, Savannah College of Art and Design
Medium
Sculpture, painting, and ceramics
Current Focus
Maritime, Overland, and Steppe Silk Roads
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Selected Exhibitions
2022
Solo Exhibition
Chambers Fine Art, New York, USA
2021
Solo Exhibition
LATITUDE Gallery, New York, USA
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Creative Practice
Tan Siyuan works primarily across sculpture, painting, and ceramics. His practice explores historical subjects and cross-cultural narratives, connecting culture with history through a visual language that moves between figuration and abstraction.
Drawing on folk embroidery, paper cutting, theatrical masks, and the blue-and-white aesthetics of Chinese porcelain, Tan combines Persian cartouche structures, European export patterns, and the formal language of hard-edge painting associated with the New York School. His work interweaves tradition and contemporaneity, the kiln culture of continental China, and the aesthetics shaped by maritime trade.
Ningbo—historically located at the terminus of the Grand Canal and the starting point of the Maritime Silk Road—occupies a central conceptual position in his practice. Motifs such as horses, ships, mountains, and female figures become layered metaphors for migration, barriers to communication, homeland, and mother tongue. Through his exploration of relationships, he examines immigrant identity, multicultural coexistence, and encounters between civilizations.
His current research focuses on the Maritime, Overland, and Steppe Silk Roads. Yue celadon from China’s Song dynasty, Portuguese azulejo tiles, New York subway mosaics, and the circulation of blue-and-white porcelain form an evolving archive for his recent work.
One important historical reference is the 1603 seizure of a Portuguese carrack carrying Chinese porcelain. The cargo later associated with Kraak ware became material evidence of early globalization, connecting Ningbo, Macau, Lisbon, Amsterdam, and New York through commerce, migration, and cultural imagination.
By transforming the Silk Road into both a historical network and a symbolic form, Tan considers cross-civilizational exchange, global nomadism, human migration, and the continuing dialogue between continental and maritime cultures.
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Selected Works
