RAE RUIYING FENG

As an artist deeply embedded in cosplay culture, my practice explores the materiality of identity, self-construction, and power structures. Through photography, installation, and performative interventions, I examine how physical layers—both real and symbolic—mediate visibility, surveillance, and agency.

Coming from a background where non-mainstream identities are often censored or dismissed, I reclaim cosplay as more than fandom. It is a method of self-determination, a site of resistance, and a process of reconfiguring selfhood within systemic constraints. Digital spaces, second-hand materials, and DIY techniques are integral to my practice, reflecting the adaptability and resourcefulness of subcultural communities navigating limited access.

My work embeds objects of both restriction and transformation—lace-bound weapons, resin-sealed blades, bandaged selfie lights—to investigate the tension between concealment and exposure, authenticity and artifice, agency and submission. Rather than operating within conventional studio spaces, I adapt domestic environments into sites of experimentation, mirroring how subcultural creators repurpose what is available to sustain their practices.

At its core, my work questions how bodies are disciplined, how identities are legitimized, and how material surfaces hold the imprints of both erasure and defiance. Through these inquiries, I seek to expand the discourse around identity, artistic legitimacy, and the politics of self-representation.




Group Exhibitions

· "Commual Conscience", Sloe Vintage, London, UK, February 2025

· "The lost, the found, the claimed", the Good Rice, London, UK, February 2025

· "Translocation", the Good Rice, London, UK, January 2025

· "SEE IT, SAY IT, UNSORTED", Central Saint Martins, London, UK, March 2024

· "Workers Reading Theatre", Xi'an Art Book Fair, Xi’an, China, October 2022

· "Integration and Extension Artists Showcase", Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Tianjin, China, May 2021



Professional Experiences

· Performance: Workman's Reading Theatre's Story of Work , Xi’an, China, October 2022

· Banma APP Plan of Children's Early Learning Peripherals , Beijing, China, May 2022  



Awards And Honors

· Won the Silver and Bronze Award in the Fifth Global Environmental Design Competition in February 2021

· Won Creative Gold Award and Silver Star Award in G-Cross Global Undergraduates Award in March 2021

· Won Bronze Award in CADA Japan Concept Art Design in April 2021

· Won the Silver prize in national design competition of  Ferragamo handbags and the work selected into NYLON_China in August 2019 issue.