The Korean artist's first monograph, this publication includes an exchange between Caroline A. Jones and Anicka Yi on scent, ethnicity, and symbiotic microorganisms, an essay by Johanna Burton on networks and extra-visual means, and an essay by Alise Upitis on the irreducible ambiguity of Yi's work.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at the MIT List Visual Arts Center from May 22 to July 26, 2015.
Born 1971 in Seoul, Anicka Yi lives and works in New York.
She has embedded tempura-fried flowers, acrylic paint, and vinyl tubing in glycerin soap and resin; floated a cow's stomach in hair gel inside a transparent Longchamp handbag; and created a perfume from the bacteria of 100 women. Intertwining the seemingly permanent and the perishable, Yi's work reorders the chemical and cultural forces that privilege containment over leakage, apathy over empathy, and elevate sight above all other senses.
Anicka Yi's work has been exhibited in group exhibitions and solo shows in various art places in New York (White Columns, Bortolomi, The Artist's Institute, Gavin Brown's enterprise, The X-Initiative, 47 Canal, 179 Canal) as well as the Green Gallery, Milwaukee, Karma International, Zurich and the Rüdiger Schöttle Gallery, Munich.
See also:
The Politics of Friendship (a collaborative project initiated by Anicka Yi, Jordan Lord, Lise Soskolne and Carissa Rodriguez).