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Graduated from Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1982, Ye Yongqing experienced the 85 New Wave and in 1986 formed the Art Group of Southwest China with his good friends, Zhang Ziaogang, Zhou Chunya, Mao Xuhui, and Pan Dehai. The group highlights new conceptualism as the creation approach with an emphasis of the visual feelings as well as life experience and value. These artists are the leading figures of the contemporary Chinese art.

In the early 1980s, the suffering art and rural painting came into play and Ye Yongqing wasn't immersed into this wave but integrated his art first with the influence of French modern art master, Cézanne, and later with those of surrealism artists, de Chirico and Dalí, for dream-like expression and humorous and satirical symbols. After receiving awards and holding group exhibitions, in 1989 Ye held his solo exhibition at the French Embassy in Beijing, China and won his international fame. In the following years, his exhibitions were housed in France and other European countries and Ye has been invited to lecture and art exchanges in the West.

In the early 1990s, a group of young artists switched to political pop art, and Ye Yongqing returned to life experiences, retaining his unique romantic lair. His artistically poetic demeanor is embedded in his wild and free characteristics. In 1991, Ye started the installation of large character posters, or Dazibao, known as series of "Big Installation". They are snippets of all manner of life experiences, such as newspaper and magazine clips, birds, birdcages, light bulbs, pipes, cars, old photos, comics etc., which are casually written and pasted on a piece of poster serving as a sort of public diary with certain spatial period. The romantic satire and humor of painting in grafiti style reveal Beuys' conceptual art visual and that of Jin Nong's realistic aura.

Ye admitted that he liked poetic elements. The elegance of ancient painting has been abandoned by contemporary culture. He said, "I always wanted to find a link, I was always looking for something like that, maybe because of my character. I felt that using the images of Beuys and Jin Nong was like erecting a memorial, a new Ma Wang Dui. I did installations for a while, including nine bird cages at the Shanghai Biennial. Everything was on silk. My paintings changed in the nineties, more of a grafiti style, a jotting-down of my feelings, kind of like blogs these days. I had wanted to distance myself from the current Chinese ideological styles and trends, and search for a free form of expression that was transcendent of regionalism. I was spending most of my time drifting around places like Germany and New York at the time." (Extracts from 'A Mirror Is Not a Platform - A Discussion between Ye Yongqing and Li Xianting', May 1997)

The aforementioned nine cages in the Shanghai Biennale are the works of "Nine Bird Cages in Winter." The works were installed in the nine long cylinders, hanging like bird cages. The repeated birds, bird cages, sketches of cartoon figures, and other symbols underline the deconstructed symbols in the real life rendering the symbols and satire of spiritual solitary in the contemporary civilization. Li Xiangting, the Chinese art critic, described Ye as an artist with "poetic literary talent in bones." Li also stated, "Ye Yongqing's works on silk are in his typical philosophical-poetic style; he has put fragments of his different spatio-temporal life experiences together on a single surface, evoking that state between dreaming and waking. The symbols are like forms that come together in a dream; the strokes are emotive, and even the aging methods of the silk evoke sadness. It is like his life...." (Extracts from 'A Mirror Is Not a Platform - A Discussion between Ye Yongqing and Li Xianting', May 1997)

Victoria Lu, the director of Moon River Museum in Beijing and a well-known art critic of Taiwan, commented on Ye Yongqing's "Nine Bird Cages in Winter", "He traveled to countries in Europe and America in the mid-1990s where his direct exposure to the Western cultures was different from the sampling experiences while viewing the Western exhibitions in Beijing. The sort of diary for snippets of all manner of life experiences, such as birds, birdcages, light bulbs, tobacco pipes, plants, cars, old photos, cartoon characters, antique cabinet, and grafiti symbols. They seem like careless scribble and decoupage of the artist, but indeed a free strokes painting ascribed in the amateur among the Chinese poetic artists. The nine bird cages in the Shanghai Biennial in 1996 are the works of conceptual art on silk. Ye described his work as 'a jotting-down of my feelings, kind of like blogs these days.'" (Extracts from Victoria Lu's 'Ye Yongqing: A Bird Artist Painting with Thinking').

"Nine Bird Cages in Winter" exhibited in the Shanghai Biennale has been mentioned by many critics and is an important milestone of Ye Yongqing's creation process. In 1998, Asian Art News ranked Ye Yongqing as one of the twenty most active and leading avant-garde artists in the last twenty years. Hong Kong Arts Centre will hold Ye Yongqing's Retrospective Exhibition in April 2008 to embody his works in the last thirty years. Recently, Ye has been very active to display his works at home and abroad.