The Dungan Garden Open Installation with BAC Artist-in-Residence Yanmei Jiang

The Dungan Garden Open Installation: Inside the Somatic & Geological Process  
with BAC Artist-in-Residence Yanmei Jiang

Date & Time: Saturday October 3, 11:30AM-1:30PM (during ARToberfest!) Rain Date: 10/4
Registration not required.

Join BAC Artist-in-Residence Yanmei Jiang for The Dungan Garden: Inside the Somatic & Geological Process, an Open Installation at BAC’s ARToberfest.  

Visitors will be invited for a walkthrough of the three-dimensional canvas installation, where she will introduce the creative process behind the work and discuss the relationship between body, landscape, and material. Engage in informal conversation and get to know Yanmei’s work. Free and open to all. 

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The Dungan Garden series explores how a landscape, specifically a lotus pond, can be expressed through the simplest possible gesture: the horizontal stroke inspired by Chinese calligraphy, and the dripping guided by gravity.  

During Yanmei’s residency, she is developing a triptych paintings installation. Displayed individually, the three panels will form a three-dimensional spatial installation that can be experienced within a studio or public space. 

“’Dungan’ means slower sensation and heightened awareness of time. For me, this is not a state of numbness, but a way of slowing down in order to become more attentive to subtle changes in the body, nature, and time. Through repeated but never identical horizontal gestures, I explore how a simple mark can carry movement, breath, memory, and the experience presence.” 

For this site-responsive work, I will be inspired by the colors and visual qualities of the autumn woods at Bethany as a reference, allowing the local landscape to inform the development of the painting. The lotus is deeply embedded in East Asian artistic traditions, while water has long functioned as a space of reflection, transformation, and impermanence. I am interested in bringing this cultural image into dialogue with the cultural living landscape of Bethany.” 

ABOUT YANMEI
Yanmei Jiang is a New York-based visual artist whose practice explores the concept of the “body as archive,” developing embodied memory through large-scale abstract painting rooted in muscle memory. Spanning site-responsive abstract painting, spatial installations, and photography, her work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at Gallery 456 (New York) and Ray Art Center (Shanghai). She holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts (2023) and has participated in residencies at the AnkhLave Arts Residency on Governors Island (2025) and ChaShaMa (2023). Deeply engaged with place and materiality, her painting practice utilizes whole-body movement and unprimed canvases to create suspended spatial environments, inviting viewers into an immersive experience and a slow pace of time.

This Community Program is a part of BAC’s Annual Fall Multidisciplinary Residency. As part of a residency at BAC, we ask each artist to build and facilitate a Community Program. Community Programs are a unique opportunity for both artists-in-residence and our local community to gather, engage, and be in conversation with one another through art. Community Programs are free engagements open to the public and/or in collaboration with a local community partners. 

Learn more about this year’s Fall Multidisciplinary Residency here!

BAC’s 2026 Fall Multidisciplinary Residency is made possible with support from New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor’s office and the New York State Legislature, Westchester County Board of Legislators, ArtsWestchester and Westchester County Government.