Yang is pursuing his Ph.D. in art history at Peking University. The exhibitions that Yang has curated include Leisure of Auteur and Amateur, How many times, I have left my everyday life, Diving Deep for Light into Darkness, Contamination, Not for Perfection, but for Contamination, Buddhist Youths: United Collective Indifference, and There are volcanoes under the sea at art museums and galleries including Cloud Art Museum, Beiqiu Museum of Contemporary Art, Inside-Out Art Museum, Goethe-Institut, Hua International and etc..
Yang is the recipient of the inaugural “Mo Yuan: Art History Research and Writing Grant Program” in the field of contemporary Chinese art writing, awarded by the New Century Art Foundation. Yang researches issues of the body and the construction of identity and the nationalist formations in twentieth-century China and the contemporary world.