In this exhibition, Lana Yuan shares new work inspired by her interest in the built environment and digital fabrication technologies. Oshawa is a suburban region well known for its industrial history, as well as its watershed landscape. The forests, swamps, and creeks flowing to Lake Ontario are as integral to the city’s social, cultural, and economic character as are the architectures dedicated to its manufacturing and energy sectors. Restructuring Echoes is the outcome of Yuan’s exploration of these natural and industrial features as an artist in residence. Using parametric design processes and 3D printers, Yuan transforms statistical data into seemingly abstract forms, exploring how sculptures can visualize municipal data related to population distribution and industrial land use in Oshawa.
As part of her engagement with Oshawa’s landscape, Yuan became interested in plant galls, which are produced by a variety of insects, parasites, fungi, and bacteria for nutrition and shelter. These organisms generate galls on branches and leaves by reforming external plant tissue. Yuan was inspired by this example of environmental intervention when she observed one on a tree in Lakeview Park, perceiving in this relationship between tree and insect a metaphor for Oshawa as an organic system. With this image of resource use and transformation in mind, she developed a method for processing municipal data through an algorithm, which could produce three-dimensional forms. Taking shape as plastic galls, the works become an echo of the data Yuan obtained from the City of Oshawa and a record of her momentary encounter with this place.
Artist Bio:
Lana Yuan is a Critical Making and Makerspace Assistant at York University’s Markham Campus Library, and an artist working across sculpture, kinetic works, and interactive installation. Her recent interests focus on combining sculptural practice with digital technologies such as parametric modeling and 3D printing. Her work explores patterned behaviours within urban environments, with attention to how quiet intimacy, routine, and proximity shape human experience. She recently began incorporating digital fabrication processes to translate datasets and systems into material forms. Lana graduated from the University of Toronto and has exhibited at venues including the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, YYZ Artists’ Outlet, and Red Head Gallery. She is the recipient of the 2022–2023 401 Career Launcher Prize, and her work has been supported by the Toronto Arts Foundation and the Ontario Arts Council.
