Man Yau

Man Yau (b. 1991) is an artist based in Helsinki, Finland. Yau holds master’s degrees from both the Aalto University of Art and Design (MA, 2018), and the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki (MFA, 2023), specializing in material-based practice. 

The premise of her artistic work is to explore the feeling of “being on display and under pressure,” a concept she approaches from the perspective of a woman and a BIPOC artist. Yau works with sculptures and installations, often incorporating objects or situations recognizable from everyday surroundings. This includes appropriated aesthetics such as Chinoiserie decoration, or larger spatial structures such as monarch gardens – places where power is represented by forcing a living symmetry. Above all, materials are central to her work, as are the value-laden associations tied to them. Yau draws on the cultural specificity of different material textures, along with the emotions and connotations those materials evoke.

Her work has been previously exhibited at the Helsinki Art Museum in Finland, Boy Konsthall in Sweden, and 198 CAL in London. Yau is currently working as an artist-in-residency at Fonden FABRIKKEN for Art & Design, Copenhagen until the end of 2024.