JOHN Yuyi, a Taiwan-born artist living in New York, she’s known for her earlier works with social media by, among other things, applying digital symbols to the human body as temporary tattoos. In a series of ongoing investigations into the intersections between the physical and technological worlds, Yuyi explores our addiction to social media and the marks it leaves on our lives.
The fact that attention has become the most important currency is also evident in the artist’s collaboration with prestigious brands, whose logos she tattoos on her skin before posting her self-portraits as advertisements on Instagram. In this way, the Taiwanese artist shows how the body has become a vehicle for media attention on social networks. At the same time, she demonstrates how our bodies are occupied by these very platforms. They influence how we present and perceive ourselves – and determine the value we give ourselves.
John Yuyi, known worldwide as an interdisciplinary voice of her generation in art, fashion, photography and social media, opens up new possibilities for the contemporary art world with her more recent experiments with immersive installations and photographic objects.
At first glance, it looks simple: Sometimes it’s objects on the body, and sometimes it’s bodies on objects. But the dynamic with which the image circulates in this work is complex and distorted; the eye never comes to rest in a simple place but is forced to gymnastics over itself to get a good look in the mirror. John Yuyi transforms each image into an object, bringing a fundamental instability to the core of the self.
