Sherly Fan is a New York-based artist.
Sherly Fan(b.1996, China) is a multidisciplinary artist working across painting, sculpture, performance, and immersive installation. Her practice explores vulnerability through the visual language of cuteness, using pastel aesthetics and plush-inspired animal figures to examine emotions often dismissed as excessive, childish, or unserious.
Her works juxtapose softness with tension — fragile animals pierced by ribbons, plush figures resisting their own sweetness, and childlike forms carrying emotional weight. Drawing from lived experiences shaped by cultural and gendered expectations around restraint, Fan reclaims cuteness as both shield and resistance. The sweetness invites viewers in; the emotional weight asks them to stay.
Fan’s work has been presented at the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), MoMA PS1’s Printed Matter Art Book Fair, and through a residency with 14C Art Fair.
