Yang Jian (b. 1982, Fujian Province, China) received his MA from the School of Fine Arts, Xiamen University in 2007. From 2009 to 2010, Yang Jian was admitted to the international residency program at the Rijksademie van Beeldende Kunsten, in 2010 he was awarded funding by the Dutch Niemeijer Fonds Foundation; in 2015, he won the Special Jury Prize of the Third "Huayu Youth Award" at Art-Sanya, China; in 2021, he was selected for The Swiss Arts Council Artists Residency. Currently lives and works in Nanjing, China.

At first glance, Yang Jian's artistic practice seems oriented towards a kind of "technical" rhetoric with regards to emotions or phenomena, when in actual fact it possesses a melancholic, novel-like core, as well as a montage-like attitude that is revealed when his work deals with specific incidents. His artistic output includes video, installations and performance, among other domains.