Presenting work internationally and across the UK in galleries, theatres and the public realm, Peake is known for an approach which is at once sensual and witty, expressive and rigorous, political and intimate. Peake produces movement, interactive sculpture, paintings that use the whole body's physicality, text, film and drawings which respond and intercept each other to articulate, extend and push ideas.
Peake's work explores notions of materiality and physicality: the body as site and vehicle of protest; the erotic and sensual as tools for queering materiality; the subjective and imagined body as a force equal to those that move in our objective flesh-bound world. By encouraging chaotic relationships between the body and material, Peake creates radical and outlandish performances, which in turn generate temporary alliances and micro-communities within the audience. Peake's painting is as an extension of the body itself: it is produced gesturally and performatively, and is both a manifestation of the external body in motion and the way personal experience and feeling is recorded within the tissue and bones. Her painting practice comes together with sculpture and performance in a reciprocal nature: engaging in a shared dialogue and creating multiple modes of processing performance, and the interrelations between dancers, audiences and sites.

Peake has worked with filmmakers, artists and choreographers including Joe Moran, Gaby Agis, Tai Shani, Jonathan Baldock, Serena Korda, Nicola Conibere, Gary Stevens, Catherine Hoffmann, Eve Stainton, Station House Opera and Theatre of Mistakes. Peake’s recent exhibition Your Meaning Not Your Materiality (YMNYM), first presented at Leeds Art Gallery in 2024, is currently on view at Hospitalfield and will subsequently tour to theCOLAB, London. Recent institutional solo exhibitions include the commissioned performance To Love and to Cherish (2025) at Jupiter Artland, UK, and Factual Actual: Ensemble at Southwark Park Galleries, London; Towner Eastbourne and Fruitmarket, Edinburgh (2023–2024). Her work was part of the group exhibitions Motion in Stillness: Dance and the Human Body in Movement at Victoria Miro, London (2024–2025), and Hayward Gallery's touring British Art Show 9 (2021).

Other exhibitions and performances include at Arsenic theatre and Sudpol theatre in Switzerland (2020), 58th Venice Biennale (2019); CRAC Occitanie, Sète, France (2018), London Contemporary Music Festival, UK (2018), Bosse & Baum, London, UK (2019); De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, UK (2018); Palais De Tokyo, Paris, France (2018); Hayward Gallery, London UK (2018), Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, UK (2017), Studio Leigh, London UK (2017); Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome, Italy (2017); Serpentine, London UK (2016); Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2016); ICA, London (2016); Modern Art Oxford (2016); BALTIC, Newcastle UK (2013), Frieze, London UK (2013), Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2012).

His practice transforms the act of painting into a deeply personal manifestation of cultural and spiritual values. In his work, Chang masterfully melds traditional Chinese ink-wash techniques with Western artistic expressions, creating a compelling synthesis of Eastern and Western traditions. 

Typically positioned on expansive sheets of linen cloth or xuan paper, Chang wields a brush nearly the length of his own height, infusing his creations with vibrant, performative energy defined by bold, sweeping brushstrokes. Drawing inspiration from Chinese literati traditions, Zen (Chan) Buddhism, and Christian faith, he perceives painting as a conduit that harmonizes body, mind, and soul. This exploration delves into the intricate relationships among calligraphy, Chinese literati culture, Zen philosophy, martial arts, and spirituality. The entirety of Chang’s physical being becomes an axis around which his expressive works revolve, significantly influenced by his extensive practice in ink painting and calligraphy. 

He recently participated in various performances, including Running Lines at LACMA (2025), Galleria Franco Noero in Turin (2024), and MONA FORMA (2024) in Tasmania—the largest scale to date. He also took part in A Thousand Moons on A Thousand Rivers at London’s Outset Contemporary Art Fund (2023) in celebration of its 20th anniversary, as well as the Asia NOW art fair in Paris (2023), The Night Migrations at Platform-L Contemporary Art Center in Seoul (2023), and Floating Poetry, Meandering Mindscape during the Berlin Gallery Weekend (2023). Additionally, he was featured in the international group exhibition the Secret Wing at the Timișoara National Art Museum, part of the Art Encounters Biennial (2021) in Timișoara. 

Chang held his first large-scale solo painting performance at Performa 19 in New York (2019) and was Outset’s artist-in-residence in London that same year, responding to a space designed by the spatial practitioners Cooking Sections. Major solo exhibitions include Poetry of the Flow at Manifesta 12 in Palermo (2018), The Question of Beings at MACRO in Rome (2016) and at the 56th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia (2015). The artist’s work has been shown extensively across Asia and is included in the permanent collections of LACMA, the Shanghai Art Museum, and the Busan Museum of Art.

In April 2023, Berlin-based publisher Hatje Cantz Verlag published the artist's first major monograph in English, Yahon Chang: Painting as Performance. Edited by Dr Britta Erickson, this scholarly monograph comprehensively documents Chang's oeuvre through authoritative texts by international art historians, curators, and critics.