Wendy Yao (born Los Angeles, California) is an American musician and curator. Yao is a graduate of

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, where she had a

radio show A radio program, radio programme, or radio show is a segment of content intended for broadcast on radio. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series. A single program in a series is called an episode. Radio networ ...

and started a radio station magazine. Her sister is visual artist

Amy Yao Amy Yao (born June 1977, Los Angeles, California) is a musician, curator, and contemporary visual artist making work in many different mediums informed by ideas of waste, consumption, and identity. She is represented by 47 Canal in New York City. ...

, with whom she was in the 1990s all-Asian American teenage

riot grrrl Riot grrrl is an underground feminist punk movement that began during the early 1990s within the United States in Olympia, Washington and the greater Pacific Northwest and has expanded to at least 26 other countries. Riot grrrl is a subcultur ...

trio

Emily's Sassy Lime Emily's Sassy Lime (a palindrome) was an American punk rock group from Southern California. The group was formed in 1993 by three Asian American teenagers: sisters Wendy Yao and Amy Yao, and their friend Emily Ryan. History Emily's Sassy Li ...

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...

. The Yao sisters along with friend Emily Ryan formed Emily's Sassy Lime in 1993, and the band dissolved in 1997. They all played multiple instruments and switched instruments during performances. Yao was proprietor of ''Ooga Booga'' art boutique and bookstore in Los Angeles, which sold artists' books, zines, records, clothes by independent designers, and other artist-crafted goods and ephemera. Yao operated ''Ooga Booga'' in Los Angeles'

Chinatown A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Austra ...

neighborhood for 15 years starting in 2004, and a second outpost ''Ooga Booga #2'' within the large-scale L.A. art space 356 Mission for a few years until it closed in 2019. Yao curated art exhibits, film screenings, and music performances at these spaces. In 2017, Yao was a recipient of the White Columns/Shoot the Lobster Award for her work creating opportunities for both artists and audiences. After the storefronts closed, Yao expanded ''Ooga Booga'' into more flexible forms with pop-ups and a web presence. Wendy and Amy Yao have also collaborated on curatorial projects, including their Art Swap Meet at

Andrea Zittel Andrea Zittel (born 1965) is an American artist based in Joshua Tree, CA whose practice encompasses spaces, objects and modes of living in an ongoing investigation that explores the questions "How to live?" and "What gives life meaning?" Early li ...

's ''High Desert Test Sites''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yao, Wendy Living people American multi-instrumentalists American art curators American women curators Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women