February 20, 2023

Yuna Yudan Ding

In this UnderlineArtTalk, London-based multimedia artist Yuna Ding offered a poignant reflection on the role of art as an emotional translator and therapeutic medium. Grounded in her personal experiences with postpartum depression and anxiety, Ding’s presentation bridged the intimate with the collective, the sensory with the structural—inviting us to reconsider how artistic practices can generate spaces for healing, care, and awareness.

Rather than relying on conventional medical interventions, Ding turned to image-making, voice mapping, and dialogic meditation to process and articulate her internal landscape. These self-developed exercises—what she terms “healing protocols”—form the basis of her recent explorations into embodied experience and psychological recovery. Her approach challenges the speed and intensity of modern life, particularly in social environments where mental health is often overlooked or stigmatized.

Drawing inspiration from artists such as Loie Hollowell, Ding explored how abstract geometry and bodily forms can act as phenomenological vessels—conveying physical change, emotional flux, and maternal consciousness without reverting to literal representation. Her own practice extends these inquiries, using softness, slowness, and repetition as formal strategies to engage with themes of trauma, care, and adaptation.

The talk culminated with a presentation of The Sense Pinball, an evolving body of work that combines emotional illustration, voice-based mapping, sculptural modeling, and meditative dialogues into a multi-sensory system of healing. Rather than offering solutions, Ding proposes a method: one that reframes intimacy as infrastructure and softness as a radical form of resilience.

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