Man Yau

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

This year, Man Yau was selected as Finland's ‘The Young Artist of the Year 2025' and has an extensive solo exhibition coming up in Pori Art Musuem. Her work has been exhibited in Finland and abroad, including  HAM Helsinki Art Museum (2024), Boy Konsthall in Sweden (2021) and 198 CAL Gallery in London (2023). Yau has worked in several countries and residencies in recent years, including Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park in Japan, Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in China, and Fonden FABRIKKEN for Art & Design in Denmark. Her work is currently on display in a collection exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki. Yau has been nominated as 'Young Talent of the Year' by Muoto-gala (2017), and she received the Raimo Utriainen Foundation Sculpture Scholarship in 2022.
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