The Distillery Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of a new body of work by Boston-based artist and organizer Yolanda He Yang.
Ruins gain urgency when a structural crisis unfolds—not as static relics but as sites where the Real pierces through, unmediated and unresolved.
In a world organized around endless production and disposal, waste becomes a mirror to the unconscious of the commodity system—a rupture where meaning fails, yet something deeply human persists. Dust, the lightest and most overlooked residue of demolition, carries the weight of labor, erasure, and desire.
Collected from the active operations of a Construction & Demolition company in Northeast Philadelphia, these fragments resist containment by value, function, or narrative. They mark the return of what institutions attempt to exclude: the silent accumulation of the Real.
Unlike the static ruin of architecture or archaeology, the landfill and recycling yard are living sites of ruin—always in flux, shaped by hands, machines, and neglect. The work in this exhibition, created during the artist’s 2025 residency at RAIR, uses dust as both medium and message. It reveals not only the violence of transformation under capitalism, but the failed promise of progress it leaves behind. Here, labor is not only embedded in objects, but undone by their circulation; the aura clings not to the art object, but to what it excludes, forgets, and buries.
Through sound, video, and sculptural installation, these works invite viewers to confront a material unconscious—where ruin is not past, but ongoing; where dust speaks, not of endings, but of what cannot be assimilated.
Yolanda He Yang is an installation and performance artist. Born in a Catholic family in North China, Yolanda relocated to various places that she remembers as homes, schools, and playgrounds from when she was a child. Her work has been exhibited around the world, including Brookline Arts Center, Vox Populi in Philadelphia, Artists Studio in Cairo, MG Space in Beijing, Flux Factory in New York, etc. As a recently awarded 2025 MassCreative fellow, she continues to lead Behind VA Shadows. She holds an MS in Arts Administration (2021) and an MFA in Sculpture (2024) from Boston University.
On view: October 10 - November 8
Opening reception: Friday October 10, 6 - 9pm