The Space Between

She presented a series of silicone paintings and metal-and-silicone sculptures along with paintings by her mother, Anne Locksley, who died by suicide in 2008. The deep personal significance of the exhibition aligns with Yellin’s ongoing interest in grief, trauma, and the invisible connections that tether us to each other. She doesn’t shy away from the impact of mental health on her family; instead, she searches for ways to translate the human experience into her artworks.

Yellin’s art practice involves reading and writing about the psyche, a habit she traces back to Oberlin, where the studio art major took courses in everything from philosophy to cinema. “Everything else I was doing was influencing what I got to do as an art student as well,” she says.

Faculty mentors such as Eva & John Young-Hunter Professor of Integrated Media Julia Christensen, Professor of Studio Art and Photography Pipo Nguyen-Duy, retired Young-Hunter Professor of Art John Pearson, and former Professor of Studio Art Nanette Yannuzzi-Macias encouraged Yellin to experiment. She remembers sitting in a closet with shellac, trying to coax fabric into the forms she envisioned in her mind; in her studio, she often poured latex directly onto the floor. 

“I was really interested in the body and flesh and what that can evoke in someone as an art object,” Yellin says. “I was doing all this material research into a fleshy textural fabric, things that alluded to the body. I was running around being a weirdo. And it was really powerful.”

After Oberlin, Yellin enrolled in a post-baccalaureate program at Virginia Commonwealth University, and later spent time in New York before attending and graduating from the Royal College of Art in London. Yellin then joined her sister in Los Angeles, where she lives now. 

“You really have to follow your intuition and your gut and be open to opportunities that you might not have been expecting,” she says. “There’s no clear path to making this life work.”

Yellin’s solo shows have been organized in Amsterdam, Toronto, and Los Angeles, and her work has been featured in group shows in Zürich, Berlin, and San Francisco. She also completed a residency in Sicily. 

In 2023, Yellin returned to Oberlin as a Visiting Artist Lecturer. She visited a few student studios and spent time with the faculty that once encouraged her at the very beginning of her career. While here, Yellin found old images of her artwork. 

“I see a through line from then to what I’m doing now… [including] this interest I’ve always had in the transference of materials and using them in a new way.”

But Yellin also remains interested in pushing the accepted conventions of both painting and sculpture. “I’ve always been in between a sculptor and a painter,” Yellin said. “I look at things with a painter’s eye, but my interest in objecthood makes me make things that are more on a sculptural plane… I find the in-between of something a really inspiring, juicy area in which to work.”

Oberlin’s BA+BFA in Integrated Arts program combines the rigor of an arts school with the well-rounded, interdisciplinary education of a liberal arts college. Learn more about this five-year program that’s tailored to each student’s academic and artistic interests.