Rene Yung is an internationally exhibiting artist, designer, writer and thinker, whose poetic and incisive works fluidly cross disciplines to address social and cultural issues in the globalized environment. She develops innovative forms of civic engagement that connect people, history, and place, to reveal overlooked patterns and articulate hidden narratives. Her work has been exhibited at international venues including TransCulture, part of the 46th Venice Biennale; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, Texas; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. She has created extensive public projects for national institutions including the Wing Luke Asian Museum, Seattle, the City of Oakland Cultural Arts and Marketing Division, and the Goldman Institute on Aging, San Francisco. Yung is the recipient of many grant awards, including from the San Francisco Foundation, the Creative Work Fund, the California Council on the Humanities, and the Center for Cultural Innovation.
Melding bold, strategic systems thinking and finely nuanced imagination, Yung makes dynamic connections between form and content to create works that are visually compelling, thought-provoking, and at the same time, broadly accessible. Her community-based work is distinguished by the same rigorous aesthetic standards she brings to her studio-based work. An immigrant from Hong Kong, Yung also brings a deep understanding of cross-cultural dynamics to her national work with diverse communities. Most recently she created Our Oakland: Eastside Stories, an integrated public art project that combines architectural artwork, social media, and community-building for the new East Oakland Community Library. She is Artistic and Project Director of Chinese Whispers, a multi-site, multimedia storytelling and research projectabout the Chinese who helped build the Transcontinental Railroad and the settlements of the American West. Yung also developed and directs StoryLab, an experimental incubator for cross-disciplinary collaborations that explore innovative ways to engage story as a non-linear tool for expressions of the multiple truths in place- and community-making.
A writer of narrative non-fiction and a member of the Sierra College Press Editorial Advisory Board, Yung brings to her visual and civic engagement works a powerful eloquence of language. Shealso has over thirty years' experience as an award-winning graphic designer. Awards and publications include AIGA(American Institute of Graphic Arts), Communication Arts, Graphis Annual, and the Art MuseumAssociation of America. Yung has been an artist-in-residence at the Djerassi Resident Artists'Program, Montalvo Center for the Arts, the Hedgebrook Writer's Residency, and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and was an Affiliate Artist at Headlands Center for the Arts. A graduateof Stanford University, Yung lives in San Francisco and is on the faculty of the Interdisciplinary Studies Department at City College of San Francisco.
Download Bio