Yirong Wu, born in 1997 in Wenzhou (China), lives and works in Milan. In 2024, she graduated in Decorative Arts from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. She is currently enrolled in the ITS Photography program at CFP Bauer. She has participated in residencies such as Kora Contemporary Arts Center (2025) and Sentieri Creativi (2024). In 2025, she won the Luigi Candiani and Scenari Alpini Award sponsored by MUNAF.
Her practice revolves around the concept of nature as a cultural construct and a relational landscape. Through photography and sculpture, she explores the relationships between humans and the environment, creating a dialogue between abstract three-dimensional forms and realistic images. She favors organic and perishable materials combined with industrial elements and objets trouvés. Her ephemeral and poetic works reflect on the cycle of life and decay, and on how nature is now inseparable from human and technological intervention.
@yirong_wu_
Tre alberi [Three trees] (2026)
The project was created during an artist residency in Varese (June 25–July 2, 2026), curated by Gattabuia APS and carried out in partnership with the City of Varese and with the support of Fondazione Cariplo.
Drawing on anthropology, ecology, and urban planning, the work focuses on the relationship between stone—a building material that becomes a metaphor for the city—and the tree, understood as a living organism that, in its bodily memory, preserves traces of the course of human evolution.
The project originated during an artist residency in Varese, a city characterized by a large number of monumental trees, where the relationship between the urban landscape and public green spaces is almost reversed.
Photographically, the work employs non-traditional techniques—ultraviolet and infrared photography, microphotography, motion photography, and tomography—to explore the relationship between stone and trees, recording and documenting the coexistence of different materials and forms of perception from a non-anthropocentric perspective.
The title Tre alberi derives from the urban theory that every citizen should be able to see at least three trees from their home—a rule that represents not only a quantitative criterion but also a hypothetical way of living.
The project is also on display at PhotoSquare at Malpensa Airport, in collaboration with
The project is also on display at PhotoSquare at Malpensa Airport, in collaboration with
