Chris Zhongtian Yuan

Chris Zhongtian Yuan is an artist based in East Williamsburg who creates video, sound, installation, and performance work by recomposing vernacular materials. His practice centers on punk filmmaking techniques that treat a location's physical structures and spatial relationships as artistic material.

Chris Zhongtian Yuan recomposes vernacular sonic and spatial materials through video, sound, performance, sculpture and installation, blurring the boundary between critique, care and confabulation. He approaches filmmaking and installation with architectural and musical sensibilities, treating the immediate conditions of a place—its physical structures and spatial relationships—as material for the work. His practice centers on 'punk filmmaking,' which deploys techniques drawn from improvisational music and experimental animation. A current project, *Two Improvisations: A Punk Musical* (2026), forms the second installment of a trilogy examining the Yěrén, a mysterious ape-like figure from Chinese folklore, which becomes a stand-in for the artist—a figure both visible and othered, alternately mythologized, pursued, and misunderstood.