Chai (拆) on Snow is a wooden design that is inspired by the Chinese demolition symbol (拆) and the shape of the Chinese Happiness symbol and laying on top of the snow. The rain falls on top of the snow and the wooden design; as a result, it leaves the imprint of the design on the snow. This work depicts the metaphor of the hometown as a place we can never be able to go back as immigrants, and home and hometown are temporarily frail existences in the world and this nature. 

Chai (拆) on Snow

In Speak from the Ground, it illustrates Ye’s feeling about the Chinese government-mandated demolition and relocation of her village. 

In the video and sound installation, Speak from the Ground, a large fermentation pot with a hole on the lid is inside of the enclosed terracotta fabric walls. The pot houses a small video screen of Ye’s mouth forming bubbles underwater in slow motion (mimicking the fermentation process) is meant to preserve tradition, culture, and identity within the walls that are cracking and falling down around it.

Speak from the Ground 

In Infinite Demolishment, the Chinese demolishment symbol(拆), paints on the houses, which mandates all the houses in the designated area in China will be torn down by the Chinese Government Relocation Policies. Ye recreates and combines the Chinese demolition symbol (拆) with the diamond shape of the Chinese happiness sign (福) to imply that the capitalist society and policies affect relocated people’s lives, wealth, happiness, and loss of the family history and memories.   The neon symbol is the modern form of the city's development and design. It is chemical gas and electrical. The signage industry has declined in the past several decades, and cities are now concerned with preserving and restoring their antique neon signs.  In this site-specific art, she installs the Infinite Demolishment in the Hartford Art School main entrance to apply her institutional critique; moreover, the institute and the staffs have no idea what the Chinese symbol is about.   More importantly, this neon installation is an adaptable and portable public art installation. It can be installed in significant public or private spaces and buildings to raise questions and critiques, and respond to their social context base on the context and content of the places.

Infinite Demolishment

Intervene in the Elevator by Moving A Couch Inside, Couch, Table, Flower, and Computer, Site-specific Installation Performance: Real Art Studio’s elevator, Performers: Nick Haggerty and Ying Ye, 2021.

In the socially engaged art project, "Intervene in the Elevator by Moving A Couch Inside", Ye moves a couch, a small table, and a bouquet into the elevator, and Ye invites Nick to her homelike installation to sit on the couch with her. They have a two-hour-long semi-private conversation about their life change experiences around their departures, what hometown and homeland mean to each other, and their situation under the COVID condition between the different countries, Taiwan, mainland China, and the USA. They meet, greet, or have a short conversation with people who come in and out to this building while people come in to take the elevator. 
Ye's homelike social sitting intervenes in the structure and function of the elevator. It examines the attention on social interaction between males and females and strangers in the public and private spaces. With this out of normal homelike sitting in semi-enclosed elevator space, where people are not normally gathering and socializing which create senses of safeness and comfort to people and the urban environment, along with a sense of awkwardness to disturb the human interactions, social systems, and the function of public facilities.

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