Yeni Mao’s sculptures have a narrative undertone and are frequently autobiographical, with regard to  the Canadian Chinese artist’s transnational background. Interlaced and recurrent themes and strategies in Mao’s practice draw upon notions of displacement and migration, the fragmented and sexualized body, and its relationship to the built environment. Mao’s sculptures and installations comprise ceramics, volcanic rocks, brass, steel, and leather—all materials whose contrasting textures, volumes, and densities are constantly played against each other. Mao’s work is composed of evocative clues and fragments that are partly abstract, partly zoomorphic, and sometimes anthropomorphic. Their domestic appeal or industrial character is always suggestive of the cultural elements that surround the artist or the non-Western traditions that he left behind. Mao’s practice is alchemic insofar as his work is reduced to the most primal materials in order to transform them into what he terms “objects of significance”.