Lu Yang was born in Shanghai in 1984. She received her BA and MA from the China Academy of Arts in Hangzhou, in the new-media department led by Zhang Peili. She has won residencies at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan and, in 2013, at the SymbioticA Lab of the University of Western Australia, Perth.
Lu Yang's multimedia installations often combine video, sculptural elements and lighting – alongside soundtracks made in collaboration with musicians. Her work explores neuroscience, mortality, pop culture, technology and religion. Projects such as Encephalon Heaven and Delusional Mandala deconstruct social, sexual and religious taboos in order to toy with them. She often works with performers, designers and experimental composers. Lu Yang is deeply immersed in the subcultures of anime, video games and sci-fi – and her art taps the enormous influence of Japanese cultural imports on Chinese people born in the 1980s.
Lu Yang’s first solo exhibition, at Art Labor in 2010, was one of the journal Art Forum’s ‘critic's picks’. She represented China at the 2015 Venice Biennale, and in the 2018 Shanghai Biennale. A solo exhibition, Electromagnetic Brainology took place at Spiral in Tokyo. Her work has also been seen at the Royal Academy in the UK, UCCA in Beijing, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and DFB Performance Gallery in Chicago