Yang Limei

Yang Limei was born in Yunnan Province, China; her exact date of birth is not recorded. Her parents are Yang Yinbao (father) and Yang Xianguo (mother), both of the Bai ethnic Yang family. Her parents later divorced. She has an older sister, Yang Liping; Yang Limei is the fourth younger sister. Her sister Yang Liping is a highly regarded figure in China’s celebrated dance community.

Early on, Yang Limei began engaging with the performing arts. She started painting at age ten and showed a strong interest in dance and related art forms. While studying in Beijing, she would watch her sister Yang Liping practice in the studio and record what she saw with her brush. During her childhood and upbringing she attracted the attention of neighbors and villagers and was teasingly nicknamed “broad bean on a pea’s back,” reflecting her rural family background.

In her professional career, Yang Limei held a solo exhibition at the Chongqing Grand Theatre in January 2017, which was open to the public free of charge. She focuses primarily on dance-themed paintings, taking her sister Yang Liping and her daughter Caiqi as her muses. Whether her works are realistic or surreal, richly colored or restrained, she pours a great deal of passion and feeling into them, expressing deep affection for these two family members.

In her family life, Yang Limei has a daughter, nicknamed Caiqi, whose given name is Yang Caiqi. She once took her daughter back to the shores of Erhai Lake. She married a village chief ten years her junior and they have a son nicknamed Ba Xiaodi. Her family relationships and life experiences have influenced her artistic work.

Yang Limei’s artistic pursuit centers on the aesthetics of dance. She admits she seeks all forms of dance’s beauty and is committed to using painting to express her understanding of the beauty inherent in dance. Her works emphasize the expression of personal emotion and, through the canvas, display her love for her relatives and for dance. Her style spans realism to surrealism, with varied use of color, reflecting her pursuit of beauty and her love of life.

Beyond her individual work, Yang Limei’s paintings hold a distinctive place in contemporary Chinese art. Devoting much of her life to her art, she captures and presents the people she cherishes, producing work marked by strong emotional expression.