For Yan Wu, a PhD student in the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, contemporary art inspires possibility. 

"It completely changed me,” says Wu of Shanghai’s Biennale in the year 2000. “It's the experience you have that stays with you and lingers. That's what I think contemporary public art should be.”

Born and raised in Shanghai, Wu says her formative years coincided with the emergence of the Internet and China’s then underground music scene. 

“I consider that [time] the tail-end of the avant-garde movement in China. I saw artists, happenings and performance. It opened the door.”

Wu, whose PhD research focuses on public art as play space, snaps a selfie inside the bathroom at the Site of Reversible Destiny – Yoro Park by Arakawa + Gins in Gifu, Japan. The 2025 summer research trip was funded by U of T's Asian Institute and undertaken with MArch graduates Lily Lu and Michelle Choi. They studied radical play spaces — and play spaces for seniors and legacy of Metabolism. Their work is documented at the website radicalplay.cargo.site.
 

But Wu says she reached a tipping point. She chose to study abroad and completed her bachelor’s in computer science at the University of Guelph, which she says has helped her interpret ‘60s and ‘70s conceptual art.

"I think computer science, especially software engineering, is about studying process,” says Wu. “You translate something into machine language and execute it to see how the process works. That’s basically what conceptual art is to me; sometimes using process as commentary, sometimes appropriating the process itself. I see those connections.”

Wu spent five years working in the field while continuing to contribute to the arts as writer and translator for Canadian and Chinese art and architecture publications, including Artforum.cn and ArtReview Asia, among others. In 2012, she curated the first exhibition of Mitchell Akiyama at Gendai Gallery, a non-profit public art gallery that was then dedicated to showing works by artists with East Asian background. Akiyama is now an assistant professor of visual studies at Daniels. 

"I chose to study at Daniels because of this history; I know the faculty members. I worked with them and I can keep experimenting with them,” she says of her decision to leave the technology sector and pursue a master of visual studies in curatorial studies at Daniels. 

During her MVS, she co-curated the Canadian Pavilion at the Shenzhen Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture with chief curator Janine Marchessault. After graduating in 2015, she spent a year in Shanghai working as assistant curator on the inaugural edition of the Shanghai Urban Space Art Season before holding a curatorial residency at U of T’s Art Museum, where she curated Making Models, an exhibit of experimental architecture projects. Today, Wu is the public art curator for the City of Markham, a role she values in its relationship to curatorial practice, as it goes well beyond the ‘white box’ of the gallery space.

“Public art gives me opportunity to work against spectacle,” she says. “I don't believe in vertical monuments. I believe in horizontal monuments – how this monumentality can be integrated into everyday life.”  

The monumentality of every day mattered most to Wu when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023.

“The only way I could cope with my time in hospital, was to imagine what kind of projects I could bring to these spaces. That gave me a lot of joy,” says Wu. 

Wu, Kara Hamilton and Patricia Ritacca, all cancer patients, formed the curatorial collective CMBT (Co-conspiracy Means [to] Breathe Together). Together, they brought Between Leaf & Light, an immersive 43-minute soundscape by artist Scott Rogers, to the Hudson Regional Cancer Centre at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) in Barrie last March. 

"Bringing Scott’s sound installation into the cancer centre felt like expanding what care could look like," says Wu. "We weren’t interested in decorative distraction. We were asking whether an artwork could engage more of the senses, introduce complexity into the hospital experience and offer patients a different kind of agency. That question continues to shape how I think about public art."

Wu’s curation of Lost and Found by artists Holly Ward and Kevin Schmidt, a graduate of U of T’s master of visual studies in studio art (all pictured above), unfolded as an outdoor component along the Markham Rouge Valley Trail over the summer and fall of 2023, followed by an exhibition and publication in winter 2024 at the Varley Art Gallery of Markham.

“Conventional understandings of curatorial studies often focus on history-making and spatial design; on how we interpret and present art in space. But it’s more than that,” says Wu. “With public art, I’m not just placing work in a site — I’m thinking about how a space can become a place that serves the project. For example, how do we bring contemporary art into ecologically sensitive trail environments in a way that respects the site?”
 

Volunteers and community groups, including a seniors' group who regularly used the trail for Tai Chi practice, were invited to wear t-shirts designed by Ward and Schmitt.

"[The artists] also constructed two mobile instrument cart and hired local amateur musicians to play the carts, or their own instrument, along the trail,” says Wu. "The idea of a rehearsal was really important. They would rehearse along the trail. People walking down the trail would hear something unexpected and discover someone playing music there." 

Toward the end of the outdoor season, the artists hosted an appreciation event at the Varley Art Gallery of Markham with the participating musicians, where they collected their experiences into Trail News. The t-shirts worn by volunteers were further transformed into sculptural pieces. 

“A lot of [public art] activities end up as video and audio documentation. What we often see is the body politic – it becomes less about the project itself. [With Lost and Found] you don't see any documentation of what happened on the trail, but you manage to experience what happened on the trail.”

Lost and Found was recognized by the Creative City Network of Canada with an Impact Award for sustainability. Their award citation said the project “celebrated everyday presence and civic participation over spectacle, offering a deeply reflective model of sustainable and inclusive public art.” 

“My PhD topic is public art as play space," says Wu, who previously taught a fourth-year undergraduate course on public art. "I see play space as a research lab." 

Collaborating with artist Gareth Long, an assistant professor and director of the Visual Studies program, Long used the Rouge Valley Trail in Markham as a research site for students (pictured above). Four students from the course — Satyam Mistry, Olive Wei, Auden Tura and Ella Spitzer-Stephan — went on to work as summer research interns with Markham Public Art, where they jointly developed an online resource. 

“It's become clear to me, contemporary cultural practice for art in public space is no longer about curating objects, it's about curating infrastructures and conditions," adds Wu.  

Wu has also been recognized by Ontario Galleries’ BIPOC Changemaker Award. The BIPOC Changemaker Award celebrates arts leaders who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Colour for their exceptional contributions to BIPOC communities and Ontario’s public art gallery sector, who amplify voices from diverse social and political backgrounds and foster unique relationships with the land.

"By definition, I'm a Chinese Canadian, but I don't feel I  quite fit within that blanket identity because I didn't grow up here,” says Wu. “The dominant narrative is often about the struggle of Chinese immigrants — the Head Tax and the history of Chinese Canadian living conditions here. I didn’t experience that. My ancestors didn’t experience that. I’m not a descendant of that particular history... But my dad told me this designation isn’t rooted in oppression — it’s rooted in respect. It reflects a long evolution of understanding. And if it gives me a platform, I can use that platform to raise my voice.”

Up next, Wu is curating a solo exhibition of Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream Morris Lum’s Interior Chinatown. Lum's Chinatown photography was recently featured by CNN and published in the book, Chinatowns: Tong Yan Gaai. The exhibition will open at the McMaster Museum of Art in September and will then travel to the Varley Art Gallery of Markham in summer 2027.
 

“We’re examining Morris’s existing photographic work, but more importantly, asking what the full scope of his practice is,” says Wu. “In the photographs, there’s this ghosted veil — often no people — but his process is deeply rooted in social networks and in building trust within these communities. The Chinese characters are also a significant part of the images, so we’re beginning to exchange how we read and understand those spaces. We’re also exploring places in Markham that he hasn’t photographed yet.”

For Wu, it all comes back to process. 

"I make projects with artists; we're co-conspirators in a way. I observe their process. I need to understand how they work. Then I can figure out how best to present how they work."