Anicka Yi (born 1971 in

Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...

, South Korea) is a conceptual artist whose work lies at the intersection of fragrance, cuisine, and science. She is known for installations that engage the senses, especially the sense of smell; and, for her collaborations with biologists and chemists.Alice Gregory
"Anicka Yi Is Inventing a New Kind of Conceptual Art"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', February 14, 2017 Yi lives and works in New York City.

Early life

When she was two, Yi's family moved from Korea to

Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...

and then to

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. Her father is a Protestant minister and her mother works at a biomedical corporation. She has stated that she grew up in a Korean-American home.Ross Simonini
"In the Studio: Anicka Yi"
Art in America, March 24, 2017 After she graduated from

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools ...

, she lived in London, where she freelanced for several years doing work as a fashion stylist and copywriter. It was at the age of 30 that she began to experiment with art, as she explored her interests in perfumery and science. Her first artworks were produced in 2008, when she was a member of an art collective, Circular File, along with Josh Kline and Jon Santos.

Work

In her practice, Yi uses scent, tactility and perishability as a means to reconfigure the

epistemological Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowled ...

and sensorial terms of a predominantly visual art world.

Materials

Yi is known for her use of unorthodox, often living and perishable materials, including:

tempura is a typical Japanese dish that usually consists of seafood and vegetables that have been coated in a thin batter and deep-fried. Tempura originated in the 16th century, when Portuguese Jesuits brought the Western-style cooking method of ...

-fried flowers, canvases fashioned from soap, stainless-steel shower heads, fish oil pills, shredded Teva sandals boiled in recalled powdered milk, and bacteria. David Everitt Howe in '' Art Review'' wrote in 2018 that this "incongruous mix of media" is “arranged into something elegantly allegorical about the various industries that constitute our identity."David Everitt Howe
“Anicka Yi”
2014 FutureGreat”, ''ArtReview'', March 2014

Process

Yi often manipulates these unconventional materials, sometimes completely transforming them, as in the case of

kombucha Kombucha (also tea mushroom, tea fungus, or Manchurian mushroom when referring to the Microbiological culture, culture; Latin name ''Medusomyces gisevii'') is a fermented beverage, fermented, effervescent, Sweetened beverage, sweetened black ...

which she fermented into leather-like material. For a work entitled ''verbatem? verbatom? 4'' created in 2014 for her exhibit "Divorce" at 47 Canal, she injected live snails with

oxytocin Oxytocin is a peptide hormone and neuropeptide normally produced in the hypothalamus and released by the posterior pituitary. Present in animals since early stages of evolution, in humans it plays roles in behavior that include Human bonding, ...

. Yi cites writing as a primary element of her practice. In an interview with Ross Simonini, she explained, "Writing is one of my primary tools. I often discover my thoughts about the work through writing. Syntax, sentence structure . . . these things really help. I write a lot of backstory for my sculptures, as if they’re characters in a novel or screenplay. I share this writing with friends, but no one else sees it. I’m not really a visual person. I don’t think in images. I don’t sketch things. I don’t use visual references as much as I should. It’s a huge handicap for me. My writing doesn’t capture the idea for the work as a sketch would. So maybe I’m not working in the most productive way. My starting point is verbal." She has also described her process as similar to, but an inverted version of, the scientific process employed in science labs. "Scientists have their hypothesis and then spend the next 20 or 30 years of their career trying to prove it, whereas artists won’t really understand what their hypothesis was until the end of their career."

Select works and exhibitions

''You Can Call Me F'' at The Kitchen

In her 2015 show at The Kitchen in New York City, ''You Can Call Me F'', Yi took swabs from 100 women and with the help of MIT synthetic biologist Tal Danino cultivated the bacteria in an

agar Agar ( or ), or agar-agar, is a jelly-like substance consisting of polysaccharides obtained from the cell walls of some species of red algae, primarily from " ogonori" and " tengusa". As found in nature, agar is a mixture of two components, t ...

billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...

that “assaults visitors” to help answer the question “What does

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

smell like?" Each woman was given the choice to where she would take a swab from her body, which ranged from the mouth to the vagina. She and Danino developed this work through "The Art and Science of Bacteria" a workshop they led during her residency at MIT.
"The Art and Science of Bacteria", She explained that she wanted this work to explore the "patriarchal fear" surrounding hygiene and the female body. In the exhibition, Yi aimed to represent women's bodies in the form of smells rather than sights, denouncing what ''New Yorker'' writer Andrea K. Scott writes as "salacious male expectations".

"Life is Cheap" at the Guggenheim Museum

Yi was the winner of the biannual 2016 Hugo Boss Prize presented by the Guggenheim. In 2017, Yi debuted at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Guggenheim with the exhibition ''Life Is Cheap,'' which explores her "sociopolitical interest in the olfactive." In the entrance of this exhibit, visitors encountered an aroma designed by the artist to be a hybrid scent of ants and Asian American women and named ''Immigrant Caucus''.Karen Rosenberg

''The New York Times'', May 11, 2017 The central gallery space had two works facing each other with distinct, contained biospheres. One work, enclosed in a temperature-regulated space, ''Force Majeure'' features plexiglass tiles covered in agar on which bacteria, sourced from Chinatown and Koreatown in Manhattan, grow. The other work, ''Lifestyle Wars'' contains a colony of ants on a structure that resembles a circuit board, referencing the organization of society and the relationship of technology to this ordering. Anicka Yi at the Guggenheim

In a video produced by the Guggenheim, Yi explains that "You're dealing with a society that is overly obsessed with cleanliness. And that's partially why I do work with bacteria as a material. Especially in the West, we have this morbid fear of pungent aromas, of bacteria. I'm giving a kind of visualization to people's anxieties about all the germs and bacteria that are proliferating all around us."

''The Flavor Genome'' (2016) at the Whitney Biennial

The 2017

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932; the first biennial was held in 1973. It is considered ...

included Yi's 22-minute 3D video entitled ''The Flavor Genome'', which follows a chemist searching through the Brazilian Amazon for a special plant. In the story, this plant is thought to have medicinal properties, so it is appealing to the pharmaceutical industry.Object Label from 2017 Whitney Biennial, http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/2017Biennial#artists-42 The film considers themes ranging from bioengineering to imperialism.

58th Venice Biennale (2019)

Yi's contribution to the group exhibition "May You Live in Interesting Times" at the 2019 Venice Biennale consisted of two sculptural installations. ''Biologizing the Machine (tentacular trouble)'' featured a grouping of illuminated cocoon-like pods made from stretched strips of dried kelp, which contained animatronic moths, whose shadows cast on the walls of the pods signify their fluttering presence. Beneath the pods, a curvaceous concrete base was marked by burbling ponds of water, housed in craters that sit at the foot of each pendant sculpture. The surface recalls the lunar landscape or, perhaps, that of another celestial body, gesturing towards the evolution of life, despite all, in inhospitable locales—what biologists call

extremophile An extremophile () is an organism that is able to live (or in some cases thrive) in extreme environments, i.e., environments with conditions approaching or stretching the limits of what known life can adapt to, such as extreme temperature, press ...

s. The other component of Yi's Biennale entry was titled ''Biologizing the Machine (terra incognita)'', and used mud from the area around Venice, Italy, in order to create what the artist calls Winogradsky panels. These acrylic frames house the soil mixed with calcium carbonate, calcium sulfate, egg yolks, and cellulose in order to create a

Winogradsky column {{Short description, Device for culturing microorganisms The Winogradsky column is a simple device for culturing a large diversity of microorganisms. Invented in the 1880s by Sergei Winogradsky, the device is a column of pond mud and water mixed ...

, wherein bacteria within the soil sample separate into colorful gradients of aerobic and anaerobic strata. The results resemble abstract paintings that are created with the aid of one of humanities many helper species, which themselves figure largely in Yi's work.

''In Love With The World'', Hyundai Commission, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Yi's studio, in collaboration with numerous technical specialists, mounted an ambitious project to fill the massive space of the

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery in London, housing the United Kingdom's national collection of international Modern art, modern and contemporary art (created from or after 1900). It forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Live ...

's Turbine Hall with "aerobes": drone-like dirigibles whose movements were guided by artificial intelligence. Yi conceived of the hall's cavernous expanse as a kind of aquarium and she created two different types of mechanical organisms to inhabit it: xenojellies, which are tentacular, as well as more buoyant and mobile, exhibiting curiosity in foreign bodies. The other form of organism is a planulae, which is similar to an

amoeba An amoeba (; less commonly spelled ameba or amœba; : amoebas (less commonly, amebas) or amoebae (amebae) ), often called an amoeboid, is a type of Cell (biology), cell or unicellular organism with the ability to alter its shape, primarily by ...

protist A protist ( ) or protoctist is any eukaryotic organism that is not an animal, land plant, or fungus. Protists do not form a natural group, or clade, but are a paraphyletic grouping of all descendants of the last eukaryotic common ancest ...

, and its movements are restricted to hovering about near the bottom of the imagined aqueous environment. These forms are coated in tiny hairlike protrusions, meant to evoke cilia. Within a set of predetermined parameters, the aerobes moved about the hall according to movements of their own design, occasionally nesting in a maintenance area to have their batteries recharged, before rejoining the biosphere the artist devised as their environment.

Other disciplines

Science

Yi works very closely with researchers at universities, including

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

and

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

. She worked especially closely with MIT Postdoctoral Fellow Tal Danino during her residency there. The pair developed new biological materials together.

Feminism

In many interviews, Yi has explained that she considers her work in smell to be a feminist response to visually-centered work designed around the male gaze.Jane Yong Ki
"Feminist Fumes'
''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published new works by Jack Kerouac, ...

'', April 6, 2015 She has also commented on the gendered hierarchies of the senses, arguing for the revaluation of the sense of smell. As a self-taught connoisseur of perfumery, she seeks to elevate it from its relegation to the beauty industry.Kari Rittenbach
"Anicka Yi: Narratives of Scent and Material Decay"
''

Frieze In classical architecture, the frieze is the wide central section of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic order, Ionic or Corinthian order, Corinthian orders, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Patera (architecture), Paterae are also ...

'', 11 January 2013 In the writings of critics such as Hsuan Hsu and Rachel Lee, Yi's work has also been understood at the intersection of critiques of both racial discrimination and gender inequality. Critic Jane Yong Kim wrote about her 2015 show at The Kitchen, which included a piece displaying the organic matter from cheek swabs taken from over hundred women. Kim explains that these bacteria represent how women's bodies can pose threats from the potential for such bacteria to cause infections.

Reception

New York publications have compared her work to that of

Joseph Beuys Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( ; ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and Aesthetics, art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism and sociology. With Heinrich Böll, , Caroline Tisdall, Rober ...

Matthew Barney Matthew Barney (born March 25, 1967) is an American contemporary artist and film director who works in the fields of sculpture, film, photography and drawing. His works explore connections among geography, biology, geology and mythology as well ...

, Robert Gober and Darren Bader. Some strategies she uses in her exhibits, such as ''You Can Call Me F'', a ''New Yorker'' writer described to be reminiscent of

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...

. The scholar Caroline A. Jones uses the term "bio-fiction" to describe Yi's work. She describes her works as exploring "a biopolitics of the senses."

Selected exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

*2011: ''Excuse Me, Your Necklace Is Leaking,'' Green Gallery, Milwaukee *2011: ''SOUS-VIDE,'' 47 Canal, New York *2013: ''Denial,'' Lars Friedrich, Berlin *2014: ''Divorce,'' 47 Canal, New York *2014: ''Death'',

Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Located in the Wade Park District of University Circle, the museum is internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian art, Asian and Art of anc ...

, Cleveland, OH *2015: ''6,070,430K of Digital Spit'', List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA *2015: ''7,070,430K of Digital Spit,'' Kunsthalle Basel, SwitzerlandCasey Quackenbush, "An 'Olfactory Art Installation' By MIT-Trained Artist

''

The New York Observer ''The New York Observer'' was a weekly newspaper established in 1987. In 2016, it ceased print publication and became the online-only newspaper ''Observer''. The media site focuses on culture, real estate, media, politics and the entertainment ...

'', 30 July 2015 *2016: ''Jungle Stripe'', Fridericianum, Kassel *2017: ''Life Is Cheap,'' 2016 Hugo Boss Prize,

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Street (Manhattan), 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It hosts a permanent coll ...

, New York *2021: ''In Love WIth The World'', Hyundai Commission, Turbine Hall,

, London *2022: ''Metaspore'', Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan *2023: ''The Postnatal Egg'', Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana *2024: ''There Exists Another Evolution, But In This One'', Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art

Group exhibitions

* 2010: "179 Canal / Anyways," White Columns, New York, NY * 2011: "Inside/Outside: Dressing the Monument," Lynden Sculpture Garden, Milwaukee, WI * 2011: "Looking Back," The 6th White Columns Annual, White Columns, New York, NY * 2012: "A Disagreeable Object," Sculpture Center, New York, NY * 2012: "THE LOG-O-RITHMIC," Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy * 2013: "Some End of Things,"

Kunstmuseum Basel The Kunstmuseum Basel houses the oldest public art collection in the world and is generally considered to be the most important museum of art in Switzerland. It is listed as a Swiss heritage site of national significance. Its lineage extends ba ...

—Gegenwart, Basel, Switzerland * 2013: "Meanwhile...Suddenly and Then," 12. Biennale de Lyon, Lyon, France * 2013: "Love of Technology," Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL * 2014: "The Great Acceleration," Taipei Biennial, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan * 2015: "Inhuman," Fridericianum, Kassel * 2015: "NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection," Rubell Museum, Miami, FL * 2016: "The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do?)," 11th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea * 2016: "NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection," National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. * 2016: "Overpop," Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China * 2017:

, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY * 2017: "An Inventory of Shimmers," List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA * 2017: "The Dream of Forms,"

Palais De Tokyo The Palais de Tokyo (''Tokyo Palace'') is a building dedicated to modern and contemporary art, located at 13 avenue du Président-Wilson, facing the Trocadéro, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. The eastern wing of the building belongs to ...

, Paris, France * 2017: "Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon," New Museum, New York, NY * 2018: "Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today," The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA * 2018: "In Tune with the World," Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France * 2018: "The Racial Imaginary Institute: On Whiteness," The Kitchen, New York, NY * 2019: "May You Live in Interesting Times," Venice Biennale 2019, Venice, Italy * 2019: "New Order: Art and Technology in the Twenty-first Century,"

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York, NY * 2019: "The Body Electric,"

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill, Minneapolis, Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in ...

, Minneapolis, MN * 2019: "Producing Futures: An Exhibition on Post-Cyber-Feminisms," Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland * 2020: "Psychic Wounds: On Art & Trauma," The Warehouse, Rachofsky Collection, Dallas, TX * 2021: "Catastrophe and Recovery,"

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, c ...

, Seoul, South Korea * 2022: "Symbionts: Contemporary Artists and the Biosphere," List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA

Awards and honors

*2011: The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award *2014-2015: Visiting Artist at the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology *2016: Hugo Boss Prize *2023: Creative Capital Awards

Media

Books

*2015: ''Anicka Yi: 6,070,430K of Digital Spit'' (Cambridge, MA: MIT List Visual Arts Center). *2021: ''Anicka Yi: In Love With The World'' (London: Tate). *2022: ''Anicka Yi: Metaspore'' (Milan: Pirelli HangarBicocca).

Podcasts

*2014: 'Lonely Samurai'

Other activities

Yi was part of the jury that selected Stephanie Dinkins for the 202
LG Guggenheim Award
an international art prize established as part of a long-term global partnership between

LG Group LG Corporation (or LG Group), formerly known as Lucky-Goldstar, is a South Korean multinational conglomerate founded by Koo In-hwoi in 1947 and managed by successive generations of his family. It is the fourth-largest company in South Korea. ...

and the

to recognize groundbreaking artists in technology-based art.

References

External links

"In Conversation: Anicka Yi with Olivier Berggruen,"
interview with Olivier Berggruen, ''Brooklyn Rail''
"Virtual Studio Visit: Klaus Biesenbach in Conversation with Anicka Yi,"
YouTube video {{DEFAULTSORT:Yi, Anicka 1971 births Living people Artists from New York City Artists from Seoul South Korean contemporary artists South Korean emigrants to the United States Women conceptual artists South Korean women artists 21st-century women artists Olfactory art