A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
SAIC faculty member Andrew Yang.

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Andrew S. Yang

Professor

Contact

Professional Site

Bio

A native of rural Massachusetts, I study Nature in its myriad forms. In addition to SAIC, my teaching spans Hampshire College, Massachusetts College of Art & Design, Lesley University, Yale-NUS College, and Duke University. I hold a PhD in Biology (Duke University) and MFA in Visual Arts (Lesley University).

Personal Statement

I work across the visual arts, natural sciences, and history to explore ecological narratives at the intersections of art and science. My work has been exhibited from Oklahoma to Yokohama, including the 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2016), the Spencer Museum of Art (2019), the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History (2021), the Chicago Botanic Garden (2024), and upcoming at the Worcester Museum of Art (2026). Curatorial projects include Earthly Observatory (SAIC Galleries), Making Kin - Worlds Becoming (Center for Humans & Nature), and Biological Agents (Gallery 400). My writing and research can be found in peer-reviewed science journals (Biological Theory, Current Biology); visual arts publications (Art Journal, Leonardo, Journal of Visual Art Practice); as well as various books, including the Routledge Handbook of Art, Science, and Technology Studies and Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations.

Publications

2024. The poetics and mathematics of air. In Elementals: Air. Vol. 2. D. Miller, G. van Horn, B. Jennings (Editor), N. Brown, C. Santos Perez (eds.) Center for Humans and Nature: Chicago. [online]

2024. Giovanni Aloi & Andrew S. Yang (2024) Earthly Observatory: situated knowledges and curating in the Anthropocene, Journal of Visual Art Practice, 23:4, 421-435.

2022. Snake eyes—a natural history of picturing, perception, and the serpents that lurk within. Revue Captures 7(2) 2022. [online]

2021. Kinshape. In Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations. G. van Horn, R. Wall Kimmerer, and J. Hausdoerffer (eds.) Center for Humans and Nature: Chicago. [online]

2021. In the middle of something: In search of a meso-aesthetics. In Routledge Handbook of Art, Science & Technology Studies. H.S. Rogers, M.K. Halpern, D. Hannah, K. de Ridder-Vignone. Routledge Press.

2020. Double bubble. Forty-Five: A Journal of Outside Research, Vol 4, March 8, 2020. [online]

Exhibitions

Curation

Earthly Observatory / SAIC Galleries, Chicago / 2021

Making Kin - Worlds Becoming / Center for Humans & Nature / 2021

Biological Agents / Gallery 400, Chicago / 2008

Other Features

Video feature on "Gleanhouse (a Prairie Librarie)" and "Prismatic Landscape" for Lost & Found at the Chicago Botanic Garden

Video feature on "Theory of the Earth Vol. 4" for knowledges at the Spencer Museum of Art

"Flying Gardens of Maybe" featured in Audubon magazine

Portfolio

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

Hyperdiverse, ecologically dominant, and aesthetically complicated¿ no other animal can rival the significance of insects on this planet. Not only are insects an ideal lens for exploring anatomical form, evolution & ecology, biological conservation, and animal behavior, they are also a means to examine conceptions of the human and the natural in the broadest sense. Through field trips, short labs, and a variety of media this course is a way to become a natural historian of the planet¿s most diverse fauna. Note: this course may require you to collect and handle insects.

Class Number

2153

Credits

3

Description

What are the crucial connections between the food we grow and eat to the ongoing challenges of global warming and biodiversity loss? What could it mean to eat ¿sustainably¿? Starting from key ecological principles of food, we will examine the promises and pitfalls of modern-day industrial agriculture, genetically-modified foods, supermarkets, as well as complexities of food waste and emerging food technologies. This exploration of agriculture¿s historical development will also have us confront issues of environmental justice, food independence, and labor that are central to food sustainability today. Contemporary food systems are inherently global and our examination will connect through of U.S. practice and policies. Individual research presentations, short debates, and weekly written assignments will be core components of this course.
Materials, videos, and documentaries will include topics like global warming, nutrient cycling, entomophagy, he American Dust Bowl, the 'Green Revolution,' GM Foods, and etc. (Food Inc. The Man Who Tried to Feed the World, Just Eat It, King Corn, Big River, and more). Writers and researchers may include: Michael Pollan, Jared Diamond, George Monbiot, Vandana Shiva, NOAA/NASA, New York Times.
Students will be expected to keep up with weekly readings and viewings, out-of-class short answer quizzes, in-class exercises, as well as small research projects + in-class presentations on food sustainability topics of their choice.

Class Number

2360

Credits

3

Description

How might critical and creative work influence human-water relations? As the threat of droughts, floods, and severe storms intensifies, scholars and artists have turned their attention to bodies of water. In this course, we will explore the growing field of the 'blue humanities' while examining representations of water across media.
We will ask questions such as: How do Western understandings of water as a 'natural resource' lead to environmental and epistemological crises? What might anti-colonial human-water relations look like in the era of climate catastrophe? How does environmental media and research-based art contribute to resistance movements and advocate for the rights of water? And how might work in the blue humanities intervene in scientific and political discourses? Course materials will foreground Black, Brown, and Indigenous voices and will include literature, film, and research-based art as well as scholarship by Tiffany Lethabo King, Christina Sharpe, Nick Estes, and others.
In this Liberal Arts graduate seminar, masters students across disciplines will have the opportunity to develop in-depth research projects as they pursue original inquiries into human-water relations. Students will expand their skills in academic research and writing while also deepening their research-based practices. 

Class Number

1217

Credits

3

Description

The world is immense and the universe unimaginably vast; the ocean's unknowns terrify as much as they captivate. Such sentiments convey ¿the sublime,¿ a central but elusive principle in aesthetics and philosophy that wrestles with beauty, intelligibility, and identity in relation to Nature. We will explore notions of sublime through in historical & contemporary art, modern science, and as well as our personal experiences. In addition to texts, films, and guest speakers, we will examine the sublime in our post-natural age through study excursions to the Field Museum of Natural History, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Alder Planetarium¿all sites of study where the sublime can be activated. Through self-designed projects, students will with engage in-depth research, writing, as well as creative presentation of their own investigations into what might even constitute the sublime today.

Edmund Burke, Annie Dillard, Immanuel Kant, Charles & Ray Eames, Allora & Cazadilla, Ted Chiang, Carl Sagan, Edward Burtynsky, Terence Malick, Galison & Jones

Students will lead weekly discussions on assigned media, do small presentations on provided and self-selected topics, and undertake semester-long research projects involving proposals, draft revisions, and annotated bibliographies as part of a final project with both written and media components.

Class Number

2291

Credits

3

Description

Taken every semester across the Graduate Division, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Class Number

1219

Credits

3

Description

Taken every semester across the Graduate Division, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Class Number

2080

Credits

3