Frank WANG Yefeng's "Groundless Flower - ཨ " Artist Talk & Screening

Join us for a special screening and artist talk with Frank WANG Yefeng, in celebration of his new work Groundless Flower - ཨ, co-commissioned by High Line Art and CHANEL Culture Fund. Yefeng will be joined in conversation by High Line Art Associate Curator, Taylor Zakarin, to discuss his practice and this exciting new work. 

Frank WANG Yefeng lives and works between New York City and Shanghai. His practice navigates the instability of identity, place, and perception, shaped by his experiences of migration and cultural displacement. He works across various media, from 3D animation, video installation, sculpture, painting, drawing, and writing, constructing new worlds that explore the tension between belonging and estrangement. Yefeng’s work immerses viewers in imaginary worlds where the boundaries between the human and non-human, virtual and physical, dissolve. His storytelling features whimsical animated characters and uncanny landscapes of his own making, and often critically examines the alienation of people and objects in dominant cultural and technological narratives. Blending playful aesthetics with conceptual depth, the artist invites viewers into a nomadic speculative space where perception is fluid, and uncharted realms continuously unfold.

For High Line Art and CHANEL Culture Fund’s inaugural High Line Originals co-commission, Frank WANG Yefeng presents Groundless Flower - ཨ, an experimental video that continues the artist’s exploration of themes related to estrangement, and considers questions relevant to his own diasporic existence between East and West. Titled after the Tibetan letter “ཨ”—the primordial vowel signifying the “beginning of all things”—Yefeng’s commission interweaves and reimagines various cultural, historical, and religious motifs to evoke a sense of placelessness and liminality. 

Groundless Flower - ཨ draws on the artist’s journeys to wild landscapes such as the Gobi Desert, the Qingzang Plateau, and New Mexico's Badlands, translating their vast open spaces into a poetic meditation on movement, transformation, and the paradoxes of nomadic existence. A luminous flower hovers between organic tangibility and digital apparition, evoking simultaneous feelings of desolation and hope. The flower character morphs into what Yefeng calls a “cosmic tree” — traditionally known as the “Tree of Life,” a symbol that exists across countless religions, mythologies, and folk tales around the world to represent the hierarchy of existence. In the work, this symbol is subverted and uprooted, levitating as an interconnected, non-hierarchical web.

On the High Line, Yefeng presents a space where fixed definitions and traditional classifications break down, inviting viewers to imagine a more fluid, ambiguous, but intertwined reality that transcends rigid boundaries. He expands the space between what we consider to be binaries: of East and West, celestial and terrestrial, organic and digital, human and non-human, isolation and connection, and past, present, and future. In doing so, Yefeng presents an optimistic interpretation of liminality — you are not “nowhere” or “nothing”  but rather, you could be “everywhere” and “everything.” The desert in Groundless Flower- ཨ , a landscape often imagined or discussed as an empty expanse, becomes a space of adaptation, imagination, and possibility.

Yefeng is the fourth artist to create a short film for High Line Originals, which invites emerging or underrecognized US-based artists, nominated by a trusted group of international contemporary curators, to submit a proposal for a new video work that considers the context of the park in a meaningful way, and will resonate with the High Line’s diverse audience. The artist Tourmaline launched the initiative with her film Salacia in 2019, followed by Onyeka Igwe’s The Miracle on George Green in 2021. In 2024, Alicia Mersy presented NYC Wisdom.

In 2025, High Line Originals became an annual commission thanks to a new partnership with the CHANEL Culture Fund. Under the new partnership, the High Line and CHANEL are able to accelerate their shared commitment to artists working in time-based media, commissioning a new High Line Originals film annually and focusing on artists who experiment with digital technologies. 

Artist Bio

Frank WANG Yefeng (b. 1984, Shanghai, China) lives and works between New York City and Shanghai. His projects have been featured in exhibitions internationally, including Pidgin Spectrum: Nonlinear Narratives of Multiculture, City Project of the 14th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, China (2023); Beast, Chimera, Kin, Hessel Museum of Art at CCS Bard, Annandale-On-Hudson, New York (2022); Hug: Nestling the Drifting World, Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art, Jeju, South Korea (2022); Boomerang —OCAT Biennial ‘21, Shenzhen, China (2021); Encounters with Incomprehension, The Wrong Biennale No.5, Online (2021); Night Lights Denver, Denver Digerati, Denver, Colorado (2021); RenZhiChu, ZAZ 10 Times Square, New York, New York (2021); Fulfillment Service Ltd, Royal College of Art and Gasworks, London, United Kingdom (2021); AI: Love and Artificial Intelligence, Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing, Beijing, China (2020); Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China (2020); BRIC Biennial – Volume III, New York, New York (2019); Cynetart 2018, Festspielhaus Hellerau and Pylon Lab, Dresden, Germany (2018); Art in the City, K11 Museum, Shanghai, China (2017), among others.

Yefeng has also been awarded solo exhibitions, residencies, and fellowships at New York Art Residency & Studios Foundation, New York, New York (2024), International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York, New York (2024 and 2021); K11 Art Foundation × ArtReview Magazine, Wuhan, China (2024), The House of the Solitary, Smack Mellon, New York, New York (2023); Fine Arts Visiting Artist Lecture Series Fellowship, Pratt Institute, New York, New York (2023); MacDowell Fellowship, Peterborough, New Hampshire (2023); Vermont Studio Center Artist in Residency, Johnson, Vermont (2022); and Asia Art Archive in America Inaugural Zine Residency, New York, New York (2022); among others.

Accessibility

We encourage all persons with disabilities to attend. To request additional information regarding accessibility or accommodations at a program, please contact cHJvZ3JhbXMgfCB0aGVoaWdobGluZSAhIG9yZw==. Program venues are accessible via wheelchair, and ASL interpretation can be arranged two weeks in advance.

What happens if it rains?

The event will occur in a covered passage and will happen rain or shine.

Support

Lead support for High Line Art comes from Amanda and Don Mullen. Major support is provided by Shelley Fox Aarons and Philip E. Aarons, The Brown Foundation, Inc., and Charina Endowment Fund.

High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, under the leadership of Speaker Adrienne Adams.

Major support for High Line Originals is provided by CHANEL Culture Fund.

Major support of High Line Art digital infrastructure is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Photo Credit

Frank WANG Yefang, Groundless Flower - ཨ, 2025. High Line Originals, a co-commission by High Line Art and the CHANEL/CHANEL Culture Fund. Video still courtesy of the Artist and the High Line.

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