Archive of Author | Yarli Allison

About Yarli Allison

Yarli Allison (she/they) - a Canadian-born, Hong Kongese art-worker based in the UK with an interdisciplinary approach that traverses sculpture, installation, CGI (VR/AR/3D modeling/game), moving-images, drawings, poetry, tattooing, and performances. Graduated with an MFA first-class honour in Sculpture from The Slade School of Fine Art , University College London (UK), Yarli was granted the entry award of the year’s Yitzhak Danziger scholarship. Yarli’s recent works (2022-2025) were exhibited at Tai Kwun Contemporary, (HK), LINZ FMR (Austria), FACT (Liverpool), Barbican Centre (London), Institute of Contemporary Arts: ICA (London), V&A Museum (London). Recent project grants were supported by Arts Council England, Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and Canadian Council for the Arts. Yarli was selected as one of the Canadian artists to be presented at The State Hermitage Museum's Young Artists Program in St. Petersburg and 30 Under 30 at The Gardiner Museum, Toronto (2014). In 2017, Yarli co-curated a collective digital installation pop-up MEMEMEME in The Crypt Gallery in central London with 42 emerging international artists. Their directed queer-porn Elephant the Allison (2018) explores obsessions, imagined identity formation, and digital dating experiences as queer ESEA folks in the “West”, which has screened internationally across multiple Queer Film Festivals (2018-2025).

Yarli Allison (she/they) – a Canadian-born, Hong Kongese art-worker based in the UK with an interdisciplinary approach that traverses sculpture, installation, CGI (VR/AR/3D modeling/game), moving-images, drawings, poetry, tattooing, and performances.

Graduated with an MFA first-class honour in Sculpture from The Slade School of Fine Art , University College London (UK), Yarli was granted the entry award of the year’s Yitzhak Danziger scholarship.

Yarli’s recent works (2022-2025) were exhibited at Tai Kwun Contemporary, (HK), LINZ FMR (Austria), FACT (Liverpool), Barbican Centre (London), Institute of Contemporary Arts: ICA (London), V&A Museum (London).

Recent project grants were supported by Arts Council England, Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and Canadian Council for the Arts.

Yarli was selected as one of the Canadian artists to be presented at The State Hermitage Museum’s Young Artists Program in St. Petersburg and 30 Under 30 at The Gardiner Museum, Toronto (2014). In 2017, Yarli co-curated a collective digital installation pop-up MEMEMEME in The Crypt Gallery in central London with 42 emerging international artists.

Their directed queer-porn Elephant the Allison (2018) explores obsessions, imagined identity formation, and digital dating experiences as queer ESEA folks in the “West”, which has screened internationally across multiple Queer Film Festivals (2018-2025).

https://yarliallison.com/

Articles with Yarli Allison

In Petri Dish We Sing

Through the lens of a stem cell clinic in the year 2135, ‘In Petri Dish We Sing’ envisions a world where embryonic stem cells (ESCs) become a raw, sustainable material that forms the very fabric of the city’s infrastructure. Inspired by MIT’s research on the Lemon Skin Chair and Yarli Allison’s exploration of the healthcare system and gender health gaps, the film envisions a society reconstructed from this regenerative substance, one that carries the traces of cellular memory.

At the heart of ‘In Petri Dish We Sing’ are three intertwined lives: the healer, inspired by Yarli’s uncle, who left his prestigious gynaecology career to return to inherited ancient healing practices that Western medicine cannot identify; a granny who, at 79 wishes to be pregnant again, made possible by stem cell echnology; and a grieving man who uses his late loved one’s stem cells to grow furniture. Their encounters unfold within the speculative infrastructure of a stem cell clinic, where care and repair could be reimagined.