Yan Wang Preston (b. 1976) is an award-winning artist interested in identity, landscapes, migration and the environment. Her major art projects include Mother River (2017), a photographic odyssey documenting the entire length of the Yangtze, as well as Forest (2010-2017), a photographic project that investigated the politics of recreating forests and “natural” environments in new Chinese cities. Preston started the project in Chongqing by following the developments of the old transplanted trees, noticing their status change, becoming “trophies, decorations and a commodity to raise property prices with.” This same project won First Prize in the Professional Landscape Category at the Sony World Photography Awards in 2019. The artist’s practice is meticulous, and exhaustive, with a particular focus on performance and documentary work. This month, the artist’s highly anticipated solo exhibition Three Easier Pieces opens at Messums London. The show includes the restaging of canonical artworks by Caspar David Friedrich and Édouard Manet, reshaping the pieces as a way of pictorial reclaim. In this interview, we speak to Preston on what informs her practice, discussing topics of representation, vulnerability and participatory art.