Chaoying Rao 饶超颖 / Femme Castratrice (b. 1991, Hubei, China)
I am a Glasgow-based visual artist, and my creative practice explores the weaponisation of desire under patriarchy and the symbiotic interaction between objectification and narcissism. My research materialises in photography, live art, moving image, sculpture, and installation. I found myself working in strip clubs from the age of seventeen. It became the place where my movement and performance practice was born and, in the many years that followed, honed. It was the prompt for my interest in how power is negotiated through the body, and in the histories and legacies of racial fetishisation. Using humour as a tool to disarm and charm the viewer, my work utilises the visual tropes of misogyny, abject femininity, and the grotesque to play with that fine line between attraction and repulsion. I want to know what it means to exist in persistently unequal terrains, and how our predecessors used these inequalities to their advantage.
I am currently researching the history of mistresses. From Asapia of C5th Athens, to Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi of C19th China, Nell Gwynne of the Restoration period, Malinche of the Spanish conquest, Harriett Jacobs - who was born enslaved. Marilyn Monroe, Virginia Hill, Maria Callas. I am enthralled by the often marginalised, sometimes violent - and always determined women in precarious positions who exploited the weaknesses of their oppressors, and how these parallels play out in today's gendered power dynamics both interpersonally and internationally.
I hold an MA(Hons) in Philosophy and English Literature from the University of Edinburgh, and a BA(Hons) in Fine Art Painting & Printmaking from the Glasgow School of Art.
My work has been presented, published or commissioned by the Bundeskunsthalle, Germany (2026); 16 Collective, Glasgow (2026/23); EXIT, Glasgow (2026); Glasgow Women's Library, Glasgow (2025); Queer East, London (2025); Buzzcut, Glasgow (2025); Scottish Queer International Film Festival, Glasgow (2024); Gallery46 Whitechapel, London (2024), The Museum of Sex Objects, London (2024); De Ying Foundation, Shanghai (2024); Arika, Edinburgh (2023/22); French Street Gallery, Glasgow (2023/22); The Bishopsgate Institute, London (2022); Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, Glasgow (2022); Society of Scottish Artists, Edinburgh (2021); Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (2021); The Horse Hospital, London (2021). Residencies include the Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow; Take Me Somewhere, Glasgow; and Hospitalfield, Arbroath. I'm grateful to have been supported by the Buzzcut Emerging Artist Award, the Creative Scotland Open Fund for Individuals, the Hope Scott Trust, the William Syson Foundation, and the Glasgow School of Art.
I work as a producer at Decriminalised Futures,. I'm a resident performer at Ponyboy, and a part of the East London Strippers Collective. I am also a freelance photographer, and my images have been distributed in publications including Dazed, Polyester Zine, The National, Edinburgh News, VICE, The Herald, Novara, and Cosmopolitan.
- Find me on Instagram OR proposition me via email
- Book a photoshoot with me here <3
- Looking for sex worker stock images under a Creative Commons license? Try my Flickr.
SELECTED PRESS:
Fringe Review / The Effervescent / National Galleries of Scotland / Dazed Digital / The List / The Skinny / BBC Loop / The Herald / STV News / The National / The Daily Star