Yen Ha
Visual Art
New York, NY
Yen Ha is an artist and writer. Born in Saigon, she lives and works in New York City, where she co-founded the architecture firm, Front Studio. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon and L’École d’Architecture in Paris, Ha has taught at Washington University in St Louis and Rice University in Houston, TX. Her architectural work has been featured in the New York Times, Wallpaper and Interior Design.
Ha has been awarded artist residencies by the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, MASS MoCA and Saltonstall. Her work is further supported by fellowships at VCCA, the Hambidge Center and Monson Arts. Ha’s short stories appear in the Bellevue Literary Journal, Waxwing and the Minola Review. Her drawings have been selected for inclusion in the juried show, 9 for 19 at First Street Gallery in Chelsea, NY, as well as featured on full-size billboards in New York City as part of the Asians Belong Here and This Place Meant public art campaigns. Her first solo exhibition, accompanied by composer Anna Rubin’s electronica music, A Storm Event, took place at Artspace in Richmond, VA.
Ha’s work uses repetitive, small-scale gestures to build landscapes based on the memory of time and place. The drawings are assembled together from individual sheets, amalgamated into vast scenes of mountains, seascapes and natural forms. Ha’s abstract and delicate lines imbue her work with a sense of fragility, recalling the tenuous relationship humans have with the natural environment.