Yi Yuan

My name is Yuan Yi, and I specialize in contemporary art. My work has:”HongKoug”,“ Canned yellow peaches”, “Industrial Saccharin”, “An Automated Associantion”. “Waste not Want not”, “This is my birthday”, “Swan Goose”.

I regard myself as a social observer when conducting visual practice. In this role, I aim to learn about contemporary society and project my understanding onto visual creations. People are my primary subject. I typically start from my familiar living environment, documenting various social groups using micro-ethnographic research methods. Through this process, I have deeply realized how society flattens individuals and turns them into pale stereotypes. Consequently, my visual work always features observations and reflections on social forms and groups.

Creating this work feels as natural to me as breathing. It is only upon completion that I begin to evaluate it. My art is truly a part of my life, reflecting and voicing concerns about my Asian cultural context in conflict, my cultural identity, immigration issues, and the systemic conflicts of cultures in my artistic life.

I often enrich my creations by combining the use of space and video to correlate narratives from different perspectives. Influenced by Marshall McLuhan’s “Understanding Media,” I repeatedly inspect my work to restore unspeakable, complex, and delicate emotions through light and shadow, deconstructing and reconstructing structures. This process helps me understand the audience’s feelings more deeply from various perspectives.

I continually refine my creative perspective and approach. In the future, I aim to deepen my research into human emotion and power.