Ren Light Pan (1990, Irvine, California, USA) is a Chinese-American transgender artist living and working in New York, New York. Her work engages with biographical issues dealing with hybridized and transgressive cultural and gender identities. Working between Eastern and Western art history, her strategic use of traditional Chinese ink against modes of contemporary painting-namely readymade or anti-gestures, deconstruction as well as techniques influenced by photographic, filmic and printmaking processes-opened a space for contentious harmony.
Born in an immigrant family, she grew up speaking Mandarin with a strong Chinese identity. Her early interests included oil painting, photography and filmmaking. After receiving her B.A. in New Media - Film/video at the University of California San Diego in 2012, the artist fell into a multi-year depression where she turned to ink painting for solace. The work came from a deep desire for divorce: from the hand, the body, the self. To the artist, her repositioning of artistic agency and authorship was the first step of many toward her eventual reconciliation with her gender identity.
In 2016, Ren Light Pan transitioned, moved to Los Angeles, and discontinued painting for 7 years. In 2022 the artist reengaged with her past work, reexploring the possibilities of ink as a process-based dialogue with her posthumous practice. She had her first solo exhibitions at Queer Thoughts, New York (2022) and Jassamine, Dallas (2023) and has participated in group shows with Asia Society Texas, Houston (2023); Martos Gallery, New York (2023); Dairy Arts Center, Boulder (2023); Alisan Fine Arts, Art Basel, Hong Kong (2023); Shoot the Lobster, NADA Miami (2023); the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas (2023); Eli Klein Gallery, New York (2023); Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris (2024); and Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas (2024). Her works will be featured in the forthcoming exhibition Ink and Light at the Denver Art Museum (2026) and have been collected by the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas, and the Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado.
