Yu Yan is a veteran Beijing collector, former editorial director of Shilin magazine, and the laughing, playful, poetry-loving, art-market-skeptical “Auntie Yan” known throughout the art world. She began seriously collecting contemporary art in 2008 or 2009 and has continued for more than fifteen years. Her collection includes paintings, installations, sculpture, photography, and a substantial number of conceptual video works, totaling nearly 200 pieces.

The space where Yu Yan and Yoyo place their paintings. Last year, Yu Yan and Yoyo, a young collector born in 1998 and a friend of Yu Yan’s daughter, discovered that they shared the same ideas about collecting and promptly formed the “YY Collection Group.” The two friends acquire works together and discuss art. They have established three spaces—for painting, installation, and video art—where they keep the collection and live alongside it. They often organize gatherings, bringing people from the art world together to drink tea, talk, and eat. When the conversation grows lively, they start dancing in rooms filled with artworks.

“A lot of people say we’re as sweet together as lovers, as if we were on our honeymoon all the time,” Auntie Yan told us with a laugh. In May, we came to Beijing to talk with Yu Yan and Yoyo about their views on collecting and the enormous pleasure of collecting with a close friend. What follows is their account: the first two parts are Yu Yan’s, and the third is shared by both. The sitting room in the space. Tomas Vu, Flatland 4, 2001. This space consists almost entirely of paintings—more than thirty works in all, a selection from what I’ve collected over the past fifteen years or so.

Of my Western holdings, this work by Tomas Vu is my favorite. He is a Vietnamese American artist and a professor of printmaking at Columbia University. Last year I went to New York for my daughter’s graduation and talked with Tomas Vu in a coffee shop for five hours. This work is, in fact, his response to the September 11 attacks, a meditation on the loss of life and violence. The series consists of 101 works. Yoyo was very lucky to acquire the last one; I own a work from another series.

Thomas Scheibitz, Kopf 1118 (Head 1118), 2021. I fell in love with this work by Thomas Scheibitz at first sight. The artist teaches at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and is considered one of the “Three Greats of Dresden.” Many people say that painting has reached its limits, that painting is dead, but Scheibitz has made an important contribution to the reinvention of pictorial structure—reassembling every visual structure and pushing abstraction to an extreme.

Lea von Wintzingerode, Brown (Part II), 2024. Another artist we both especially like, and whose work we collect together, is the Berlin-based artist Lea von Wintzingerode. Her work is closely connected to the body’s expression under the influence of revelry and music. She often paints historically important women—some artists, some dancers, and some even poets or writers.

This painting depicts Trisha Brown, a major American modern-dance artist of the twentieth century. Through Brown’s dancing posture, the artist weaves an idea into the work. Looking at the image, we can see the influence of Expressionism, including the painting techniques of the period associated with Munch’s The Scream. Yu Yan at Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin. Scheibitz and Lea both live in Berlin, my favorite city.

I go to Berlin every year. It’s a city that never sleeps, with a great deal of underground culture, including electronic music, and crowds of young people. After I arrive, I feel young myself—very much in the spirit of the avant-garde. Of course, I mainly go for Berlin Gallery Weekend, the year’s major exhibitions, meetings with curators, and visits to artists’ studios. Many artists have told me that their greatest wish in life is to be poor artists. They enjoy a state of frugality that still preserves their dignity.

Some even work as cashiers during the day and return to their studios to paint at night. Others share a studio among four or five people. Their material demands are very modest; they simply enjoy art. Yu Yan and Yoyo drink tea in front of Dai Chenlian’s work. Dai Chenlian, Mother Trilogy—Searching for Osmanthus, the Moon Wheel Shifts II-A04—Osmanthus, 2022. China has artists like that, too—Dai Chenlian, for example, who makes theatrical performances. He has been my friend for ten years, and he has continued to live in this way.

Yoyo and I both love this painting. At its base is a very large osmanthus tree. Because the character for osmanthus, gui, appears in his mother’s name, the tree becomes, for him, a projection of his mother’s image. Yu Yan at an early gathering with artists, attending a theatrical event. Around 2016, I would go to Heiqiao at night to see Dai Chenlian, He Chi, and Yan Bing. I remember one night especially: I was with about nine artists, and we sang from nine in the evening until six the next morning. By the end, we had all sung our voices hoarse.

Yan Bing stood in the wind with a guitar, playing and singing “Friend.” I drove home afterward, with tears in my eyes the whole way. It was a story belonging to youth. Yan Bing, Steamed Buns with Blossoms Piled Up, 2016. I have always felt that Yan Bing is a spiritual aristocrat. This work depicts the steamed buns with blossoms that people in the northwest eat every day. He is the child of a northwestern farmer, and the land his family owned was extremely poor.

Most of his still lifes are connected to the northwest. He has painted steamed buns, cowhide, and mushrooms. He is a vital artist nurtured by that land, and the narratives behind his painting language remain inseparable from it. It was extraordinarily difficult for him to take the entrance examination for the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He told me that he traveled to Beijing by train with only 600 yuan. That 600 yuan had to cover not only the train fare but also a guesthouse and the application fee.

Yu Yan, at seventeen or eighteen, with a Wang Dongling calligraphy work left by her father. My earliest connection to collecting art may have begun when I was seventeen or eighteen, when my father brought home a calligraphy work by Wang Dongling. No one in the family knew much about art, but I thought the writing was beautiful and asked my father to leave it with me. He said, “Are you sure?” I said, “I’m sure.” The work is still with me. It has great memorial significance: I took it from the north to Hainan, lived in Hainan for ten years, and then returned to Beijing. It has accompanied me all this time.

Cover of Shilin featuring a work by the artist Song Yuanyuan. Song Yuanyuan, May You Succeed, 2009. I began seriously collecting contemporary art in 2008 or 2009. At the time, I was the editorial director of Shilin, and Bao Dong was responsible for the art section. He was, in a sense, my introduction to contemporary art. I remember that he once put a work by the artist Song Yuanyuan on the cover of Shilin. It moved me, and I thought: So professional artists like this exist.

A work by Geng Jianyi, The Book from Heaven, in the collection of Yu Yan and Yoyo’s YY Collection Group. After I began paying closer attention to contemporary art, I became friends with several young artists. Starting in 2011, I began talking with more artists and art institutions and studying the trajectories of artists such as Geng Jianyi, whose work could enter art history. I also collect works by artists from Switzerland, Germany, and New York. The worldviews, values, and conditions they present are different. It has been a process of learning.

It has allowed me both to make friends and to enter their contexts, to experience different cultures from within. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Blue, 2018. My collection is not limited to paintings. It includes installations, sculpture, photography, many conceptual works, and Dai Chenlian’s theatrical performance pieces. I am especially pleased with the video portion of the collection because I did not follow the art market. I learned gradually, according to my own inclinations.

The latest video work I bought is Apichatpong’s Blue, an award-winning work from the Venice Biennale. It contains a kind of Eastern sadness and the rhythmic language of poetry, and it moved me. The price of a car bought me this small box. Another artist I particularly like is the Indonesian artist Melati Suryodarmo. I find the way she manifests female strength deeply moving. Melati Suryodarmo, I Love You, 2007. The artist performing at Museum MACAN, Indonesia’s largest contemporary museum, in 2021.

The work I own is called I Love You, which I collected in 2018. At the time, she carried a 100-kilogram glass object during the performance, moving it while rhythmically saying, “I love you.” The performance lasted a full five hours—a tremendous physical challenge for a woman. Yang Fudong, film The Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest (one of the series), 2003–2007. Yang Fudong, The Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest (one of the series), 2007. And, of course, there is Mr. Yang Fudong, an artist who has unquestionably left a significant mark on the history of video art in China.

He made the film The Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest, as well as photographic works. My photograph is called The Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest (one of the series). I spent three months discussing its acquisition with the artist because he did not want to sell to private collectors. Only one work is now in my hands; the other four are all in museums. Yoyo and Yu Yan’s daughter. Yoyo and Yu Yan drink tea in the tea room, which is also the installation space of the collection group. Yu Yan: Yoyo was my daughter’s classmate at a high school in New York. He is a young collector born in 1998.

We share an understanding of the current state of collecting in China, including very similar preferences when it comes to artists. Yoyo also has exceptionally high emotional intelligence. He gives me enormous emotional support—he is my anchor. Yoyo: That’s why we immediately hit it off and formed the “YY Collection Group,” because both our names contain the letter Y. We collect works together, discuss them, and spend our days having fun together. All of that adds to the pleasure of collecting.

Apart from art, when we have nothing else to do, we sit and drink tea, and after the tea we continue talking about art. Zhang Huan, Like Life, 2021. Lu Lei, Pretending to Be an Arrogant Dog, 2015. Yu Yan: A lot of people say we’re as sweet together as lovers, as if we were on our honeymoon. Sometimes, after discussing a work, we put on music and start dancing. Lu Lei’s Pretending to Be an Arrogant Dog stands beside the dance floor in our tea space, right next to Mr. Geng Jianyi’s The Book from Heaven, by a very serious artist.

Yoyo: There are also works by Wu Shanzhuan, which represent an era: after the Reform and Opening, as China’s industrial civilization advanced and many migrant workers entered the cities, he liked to carry a woven sack marked with blue and red stripes. Miriam Cahn, Refugee (ZEIGE!21.10.2021), 2021. Yu Yan: I have always thought Yoyo’s eye was unusually sharp. In 2017, I took a liking to Miriam Cahn’s Refugee series but hesitated and didn’t buy one. Later, Yoyo bought this work. It is now very difficult to find.

The painting hangs in his home every day. I think to myself: That’s not bad. I can see it every day there, too. Left: Zhang Kaitong, Untitled, 2021; right: Bu Shi, Mirror House, 2024. Yu Yan: In recent years, Bao Dong has organized the Beijing Contemporary Art Fair, and naturally we wanted to support an old friend, so last year the collection group acquired two small works. I think Beijing Contemporary is distinctive. It provides collectors with a platform: without leaving the country, we can see artists from many different countries.

Yu Yan in the painting space of the YY Collection Group. Yoyo: As a collector, once you have overcome the impulse and possessive desire to own a work, as well as the desire to make money, and you still want the work, then you know you won’t regret buying it. We think good art has one shared quality: it rewards looking. That, of course, comes from visual training and experience. Once you have seen enough, felt enough works, and spent enough time living with them, you naturally know which ones reward looking.

Yu Yan in front of a painting by Caroline Bachmann. Yu Yan: For us, money means buying works. All my money goes toward works, which I bring home and allow to enter into a relationship with the spaces of my life and with me. When I look at Caroline Bachmann’s painting of Lake Geneva, I think of the broad, distant landscapes painted by Ni Zan—the same quiet endurance. That is the meaning of collecting.