The Distillery Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of a new body of work by artist and community 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 and raised in a Catholic family in North China, Yolanda relocated to various places that she remembered as homes, schools, and playgrounds when she was a child. Her work employs the hidden power of subtlety and ephemerality that often tie to the labor, materiality and storytelling. Yolanda’s work has been exhibited in both public and indoor places, including Harvard Square, Brookline Arts Center, The Rose Kennedy Greenway, Vox Populi in Philadelphia, Villekulla Farm in Nebraska, Artists Studio in Cairo & Luxor, Wind H Art Center, MG Space in Beijing, Flux Factory in New York, Rockwell in Somerville among others.
She is a recipient of Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Opportunity Fund from Mayor Office of Arts and Culture in City of Boston, Collective Future Funds Ongoing Platform Grant, Boston Chinatown Community Grant, and Cambridge Arts Association among others. As a recently awarded 2025 MassCreative fellow, she continues to lead Behind VA Shadows, a community public art project amplifying the creative voices of frontline staff in nonprofit art museums and organizations. She holds MS’21 in Arts Administration and MFA in Sculpture 24’ from Boston University.
On view: October 10 - November 8
Opening Night: Friday, October 10, 6–8pm
After Progress begins with an evening of exchange. Bring with you one object—something still precious, but no longer necessary to keep. Over the course of the evening, these objects will circulate: passed between strangers, traded among friends, or simply shared as stories.
You are invited to take part in this gentle exchange of things, conversations, and encounters. Participation in the exchange is encouraged but not required—come to meet the artist, discover the works, and join in a night shaped by generosity and gathering.