About The Artist
Temo (b. 1985; Dalian, China) is a quadrilingual artist, psychotherapist, writer, and educator working in Chicago. Perpetually experimental and greedy in her artistic practice, she works across traditional portraiture, collage, impressionism, surrealism, and more. Her conscious work tends to explore displacement, exile, loss, and longing, while her surrealist work dreams on paper. She is also a published cartoonist in Narrative Magazine.
Temo was a less-than-mediocre Economics graduate of the University of Chicago and a quite good Counseling Psychology graduate of Northwestern University. She received foundational training in classical Western and Chinese art from her mother, a noted Chinese Calligrapher and fine artist. But it was her improv training from iO, the Annoyance, and the Second City that finally taught her, on the eve of her 30s, how to play, create, and be an artist on her own terms.
Select shows & Publications
2026 Pictures of You, Bridgeport Art Center, Chicago, IL (curator: Marci Rubin)
2026 Co-authored chapter, “Playing in the Deep: Applying Improvisational Principles to Therapy” with Katharine Joy Houpt In Materials and Media in Art Therapy: Contemporary Theory and Practice (editor: Catherine Hyland Moon). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032720166-18
2025 Solo Exhibition, The Book of Genesis, Park Community Church Hyde Park, Chicago, IL
2025 The Landscape is Changing, Bridgeport Art Center, Chicago, IL (curator: Marci Rubin)
2025 Solo Exhibition, Au Revoir: Seven Years of Art in Suite 1360, The Monadnock Building, Chicago, IL
2025 Finalist at the Bridgeport Art Center’s 13th Annual Juried Art Competition (jurors: Rose Blouin and Sarah Spencer; curator: Marci Rubin)
2024 Cartoon, “Abandonment Issues,” published by Narrative Magazine
2021 Interconnectivity, The Art Center Highland Park, Highland Park, IL (jurors: Julie Rotblatt-Amrany and Julian Wang; curator: Caren Helene Rudman)
2020 3rd Annual Womxn Show, Bite Café, Chicago, IL (curator: Jesy Grose)
2019 Solo Exhibition, Art By Temo, Bite Café, Chicago, IL (curator: Jesy Grose)
2019 Beyond the Selfie, The Art Center Highland Park, Highland Park, IL (jurors: Judy Norris and Suzette Bross; curator: Caren Helene Rudman)