Jiaying Yu studied Material Science and Engineering (Bachelor) in Changsha from 2014 to 2018. Her interest in art and photography was sparked by an encounter with a fashion photographer. From 2019 to 2023, she studied photography at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen (Bachelor) and since 2023 at the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Master).

Her practice engages with themes of displacement, drifting identities, and female subjectivity, exploring how bodies and images exist in states of instability and transition. Moving between observation and intervention, her work reflects a sensitivity to atmosphere, light, and the subtle tensions between presence and absence.

Solo Exhibition 

In Between, Ruhr Museum, Essen, Germany, 2025-26