Sun Yiyun

Chinese artist Sun Yiyun was born in 1983 in Baoding, Hebei Province. She graduated from the Department of Sculpture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and currently lives and works in Beijing. Working primarily with needle-felted wool, Sun transforms soft fibers into the visual semblance of hard materials such as bricks and concrete through a slow, repetitive process of stabbing and compression. Her practice constructs a visual and conceptual tension between softness and hardness, the organic and the inorganic. Through the ambiguous nature of fiber, she creates a "third space"—a poetic reimagining of materiality, force, warmth, and structure.

Her works are held in the collections of major institutions including the Hubei Provincial Museum, the China Sculpture Museum, Zhejiang Art Museum, and the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Recent exhibitions include: Echoes of Civilization: Ode to Craft, CAFA Taoxichuan Art Museum (2018); The Boundary of Objects: Studio Four Exhibition, CAFA Taoxichuan Art Museum (2018); Datong International Sculpture Biennale, Datong (2018); Echoes of Civilization: The Beauty of Craftsmanship, Madrid, Spain (2018); Chinese Gestures, Wuhan, Hubei (2019); Spring of Design, Guangzhou (2021); All Things Return: 2021 Women’s Art Project, Beijing (2021); The 9th Tomorrow Sculpture Award, Chongqing (2021); Brilliance: Tradition Reimagined, Beijing (2023); and Ceramic Transitions -- China-Bulgaria Contemporary Ceramic Art Exhibition, Jingdezhen (2024).

Credit: Sun Yiyun


This series employs the technique of needle felting to reconstruct the grammar of fiber, using the imagery of bricks and concrete as vessels of transformation. Through repetitive stabbing motions, the softness of wool is metamorphosed into forms that evoke hardness and weight—bricks, cement, walls—creating a striking visual paradox. The artworks intensify contradictions between binaries: softness and hardness, warmth and coldness, appearance and essence. The organic breath of wool and the inorganic silence of concrete are unified within a single form, reconfiguring the material order. Fiber’s inherent ambiguity becomes a strategy for constructing a “third space”—one that pierces not only material surfaces but the perceptual horizon itself. In this space, re-constellation is no longer merely a physical gesture but a conceptual reawakening of potential, suggesting the infinite possibilities of material language in a contemporary context.
《o》 、 《One》, 《0.0416 ㎡》, 《~》, 《One Square Meter 1》, 《One Square Meter 2》，Wool，45X45X10cm、62X62X15cm、85X62X12cm、238X100X10cm、110X95X10cm、100X100X10cm，2020-2025
Image from the artist and Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art
Image from the artist and Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art
X