2020 has been a hard year for the arts, but they continue in these strange times. Amid the chaos, we are still finding voices producing compelling work. Yee Wong is such an artist. Her works have been seen on different media internationally from the social media of contemporary art museum like Saatchi Gallery in London to the Art Voices Magazine cover in New York.

Yee Wong is an Asian-American artist based in New York. Her work is bright and alive, a mixture of glamor and playfulness, natural forms and her imaginary world. Working in 2D and 3D forms, Yee has honed an approach of pop sensibility and elan applied to compelling concepts.

Yee’s style is definitively optimistic. Throughout her works, there is an inexhaustible wellspring of joy at the center that shows her passion and love for art. As she has said herself, “One thing I really want to do with my art... is send a positive message to viewers.” In this she has found tremendous success.

Yee kicks off the 2021 strong with her new art series, Forever Bloom which have been seen on Yahoo News. Over the course of three images, the series shows a neon sign with a bouquet of flowers emerges from under a silver material. Each photograph depicts a step in the process of personal liberation in a striking visual metaphor of escaping from darkness to happiness. The resulting series is timely, powerful, and important. The attention grabbing palette and compelling setting all come together with the positive message, the kind of thing image sharing platforms like Instagram were made for. That appeal to popular platforms makes Yee’s work relevant and relatable. She is an artist to watch not only because her work is surprising and captivating, but also because it is made for our time. Yee’s work represents the current moment and the contemporary pop culture landscape, just as artists like Picasso and Warhol before her represented their own times.

While the aesthetic could be simplistic and saccharine, Yee continually pushes it to mean more, bringing the joy that the colors and presentation evoke to a myriad of subject matter.

With her history and growing influence of her works, she is certainly an artist to watch this year, with a style perfectly matched for the visual culture of today.