Cherrie Yu Is a Perpetual Student

In 2022, when Cherrie Yu was a few years out of graduate school, she landed a year-long residency at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio’s visual arts program in Dumbo, Brooklyn. But upon arrival, she says, she found she didn’t want to make art.

Yu, now a visual arts fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center, felt burnt out from the fast pace of the previous few years: in 2013, she graduated from high school in China and came to the U.S. to study at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, which led directly to getting an M.F.A. in performance studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Afterward, she moved to New York City and pushed to secure an artist visa to stay in the country. At the residency in Dumbo, Yu placed her creative output on hold. Instead of immediately making art, she says, “I started to do things outside of the studio that felt enriching to my life.”