Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

My name is Yameng Lee Thorp, I am an Oakland based artist with roots in China and South Africa.

The primary concern of my work is to confront the psychic fallout shaped by political erasure. My paints are what I call “speculative landscapes”. I am interested in making otherworldly realities to merge the mythical with the deeply autobiographical. Through a material language of pigment sticks, oil, ink, and charcoal, I want to build emotional terrains where life flourishes in resistance, speaking to both survival and the broader collective memory.

While At Headlands

I’m drawn to Headlands for its rare blend of solitude and connection—its physical setting at the edge of land and sea mirrors the emotional terrain I often navigate in my work. As an artist whose practice involves building abstract, mythical landscapes rooted in memory, survival, and erasure, I’m curious how this dramatic shift in environment might shape the imagined worlds I create.