On a residency at the Shanghai Museum of Glass, Frank Wang Yefeng is deep in preparation for Art Basel Hong Kong 2025. At this year’s fair, the Shanghai-born artist will show as part of the Encounters sector, following an invitation from curator Alexie Glass-Kantor.

For the moment, though, he is present for his interview with Art Basel Stories, dialing into a Google Meet. He speaks with eloquence and philosophical curiosity, describing his proposal, Desert Garden, a multimedia installation that tells the true story of his experience getting lost in northwestern China’s Gobi Desert. The installation comprises half-flower, half-animal figures – he teases these in digital renders – as well as footage he shot in the desert.

‘Trying to find where I parked my car, there was a voice that said to me, “as long as you keep walking, you are never lost,”’ Wang explains. While traumatic, the experience of finding himself astray in total wilderness echoes the themes his work addresses: non-belonging, migration, and questions relevant to his own diaspora, such as what it means to live between East and West – both geographically and ideologically.

Today, Wang lives and works in the US, although his art practice began at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, where, in 2007, he graduated with a BFA in sculpture. Despite the course’s heavy focus on Socialist Realism and traditional methods, Wang moonlighted as a digital artist, making use of Photoshop and Autodesk Maya, developing what he now dubs ‘virtual sculpting.’ From there, lacking guidance, he moved to San Francisco and became inspired by the likes of Martin Puryear and Maya Lin – who showed at the de Young Museum in 2008 – before taking on an art and technology MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Despite a meandering entrance into the art world, he now embraces an interdisciplinary approach, spanning painting, drawing, motion capture, ZBrush, 3D printing, and time-based media.

After graduating, he spent 9 years as a tenured professor at Rhode Island College, building the school’s digital media program. During this time, he toiled with feelings of displacement and boredom (he would work, go home, and repeat), influencing works such as Penthaus (2017), a looping video installation that follows a two-legged pig as it floats across dark, ominous waters, peppered with bizarro black-eyed babies, keyboard-textured women, and the inside of a pair of jeans. It is disturbing and characteristically post-human.

Elsewhere in Wang’s oeuvre, works such as BIRDS Volume 1 (2019) follow Aardman-esque creatures through a series of skits: a seabird lost in the ocean; a group of dodos staring down the viewer; a Trumpian bald eagle posing as a border control officer; or a flock of pigeons at an art opening. Part of Wang’s bestial fascination comes from his childhood. As a youngster, he spent much of his time alone – his parents both worked. ‘I was never surrounded by real human beings,’ says the artist, who like many of his generation was an only child, accompanied only by his toys, comics, and cartoons. ‘I would pry a puppet open or break a toy just to find out if there is a soul inside, reassembling it in abnormal ways to make a new character that only belonged to me.’

More recently, Wang’s penchant for maritime creatures has developed into a tool for addressing racialized stereotypes. For Art Basel Hong Kong 2024, he presented an installation called Pantheon of the Octopi with Vanguard Gallery (who will also present Desert Garden at this year’s fair), complete with LED-lit deep-sea sculptures, reappropriated drawings, and a short film following a humanoid octopus reading The Yellow Peril (2014) – a book broaching the land-grabbing, tentacular characterization of East Asia in Western literature. Wang began working on the project following a sabbatical in Berlin. Returning to New York City in the throes of COVID-19, Asian hate was at an all-time high. Floating and idle, his octopus was here removed from its mythological associations, at once cute, zany, and uncanny. ‘It gives people a space to reimagine what it is,’ says the artist, highlighting his increasingly productive approach to feelings of foreignness.

Throughout his practice, Wang tests his methods’ limits, notably with 3D animation. In fact, he is often self-critical, citing his recent project Avatopology (2024), for which he used Fiverr to commission freelancers from across the globe to make avatars. The results, he felt, failed to bypass the hierarchy at play; most of the creators were based in Global South territories. ‘That really gives you a clear picture of how this economic capitalism system works,’ he says.

Considered in relation to his upcoming project at Art Basel Hong Kong, it is clear that Wang is both an existentially and culturally nuanced practitioner. He hopes his new work will encourage viewers to question their identity outside the familiar urban space, beyond anthropocentric narratives, aligning its parts under the rubric of his own migrant status.

As the interview draws to a close, Wang quotes Czech-born philosopher Vilém Flusser: ‘Exile, no matter what form it takes, is a breeding ground for creative activity, for the new.’ A clear throughline to his rich practice: outsiderism.