Sylvia Yu

Sylvia Yu, 16 years old, was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) at age 3 for high function at art. She has a mentality of a 5-year-old stuck inside the body of a 16-year-old yet art has become the key to unlocking the door for her. Sylvia connects with the world through art and deals with life’s struggles by turning art into her secret language to express love and loss.

To describe Sylvia, one must first start with the broad label used to explain her talent. Sylvia demonstrated her talents at a very young age. She first displayed her special talent with her first picture when she was only three years old. While the early art is, at first, heartfelt, and colorful – Sylvia’s later artwork quickly transforms into intense, expressionistic drawings and paintings, offering challenging perspectives with distorted faces, bodies, eyes and twisted colorful lines.

Sylvia’s art forces us to look at her artworks as abstracts, from different angles, sometimes broken apart, and she seems to demonstrate extraordinary intuitive and imaginative qualities far beyond her world. Her bright colors, unique shapes and twisted lines provide us with a glimpse into her imaginative and inventive mind. Seeing Sylvia’s art gives us hope as we can see her ‘Disorder’ is producing beautiful pieces of art we have yet to fully interpret.