Yafeng Duan (b. 1973, Hebei, China) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. She studied at the Chinese Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, as well as at Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences and the Bauhaus University in Germany, where she received her Master of Fine Arts degree in 2011. In 2015, she served as a visiting lecturer at Bauhaus University.
Duan's paintings have long been concerned with the relationships between image, space, and bodily perception. She does not depict concrete landscapes, nor does she simply transplant "Chinese elements" into Western abstraction. Instead, she translates the spatial breath, intentional blankness, and inner rhythm of Chinese painting into the material structure, color layering, and abstract space of European painting. Her works often originate from her perceptual experience of changing natural phenomena - light, mist, water, plants, and fluid movements - evolving through layered processes into irreproducible images. Forms often hover between appearance and dissolution, as if breathing, floating, and growing, creating a viewing experience that is at once quiet and deeply charged with inner energy.
In recent years, her work has been presented in exhibitions and art fairs across Europe, Asia, New Zealand, and the United States. Her monographs have been published by Kerber Verlag and Snoeck Verlag, including Form of the Formless published by Snoeck Verlag in 2023.