Yongping Ren is an artist and art worker currently based in Melbourne, Australia. His expanded ceramic practice is focused on the way in which clay records gestures, thoughts, desires and attitudes over time. Clay’s fluidity and impermanence in the studio actively reflects back the liminality of experience, and in the process challenges the conventions of strength and permanence in ceramic cultures. Through tensions between public/private, permanent and fragile, Ren’s works collapse the sacred and profane—distinctions that are replaced by more marginalized forms of spatial intimacy, failure, and instability.

Born in 1990 in Xiaoyi, China, Yongping holds a BFA (Theatre Production Design) from VCA, University of Melbourne, and is graduating with an MFA (coursework) from RMIT, Melbourne. He also holds a Diploma of Live Production Theatre and Events from Swinburne, Melbourne, and an Advanced Diploma of Visual Art from LaTrobe College of Art and Design, Melbourne.

Yongping's work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including the Huaniao Island International Art Festival in China. He has performed work with Benjamin woods as Lèlè 1 at Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, and Lèlè 2  in group exhibitions at Testing Grounds as part of a Chinese Museum Art Collective, and showed his works in A Queer Art Exhibition celebrating Queer Creativity for IDAHOBIT 2024 and 2025 at RMIT, Melbourne. In 2024, he held his first solo exhibition, Rúyì, at MAILBOX ARI. In 2025, Ren also had his first residency at ARIXCHANGE with Sawtooth ARI and Blindside ARI, presenting the outcome open studio Red paint on concrete floor (with Olly Read) at Blindside ARI, Melbourne.

Yongping has held various volunteer and intern positions at artist-run spaces and worked as Gallery Assistant at Bus Projects (2023-24). He is currently co-director of Run Artist Run, an artist studio residency program in Docklands.

yongpingren[at]hotmail.com

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