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ArtSlant Profile
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Kim Ye
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 Kim Ye, Autoerotic (shirt-sleeves),
2007, latex
© kim ye Kim Ye, Untitled,
Found Objects, 24 x 14 x 90"
 Kim Ye, Untitled (legs),
2006, Plaster, spray-paint, life-sized
© kim ye Kim Ye, autoerotic (accessory),
2007, latex, silicone, life-sized
© kim ye Kim Ye, Harrison,
2006, Wood, 30 x 14 x 36"
© Kim Ye Kim Ye, Untitled (detail),
2006, Found Objects, 24 x 14 x 90"
© defamer.com Kim Ye, The Knot in my Stomach,
2006, polyester filling, nylon, 36 x 36 x 36"
© Kim Ye Kim Ye, Legtorso,
2006, Wood, 36 x 16 x 30"
 Kim Ye, Autoerotic (shirt-sleeves: uninhabited),
2007, latex, life-sized
© Kim ye Kim Ye, Autoerotic (dress: uninhabited),
2007, latex, life-sized
© Kim Ye Kim Ye, Autoerotic (shorts: uninhabited),
2007, latex, life-sized
© Kim Ye Kim Ye, Autoerotic (dress),
2007, latex, life-sized
© kim ye Kim Ye, Autoerotic (shorts),
2007, latex, life-sized
© kim ye Kim Ye, Puberty (stills),
2006, video, 7 minutes 26 seconds
© kim ye Kim Ye, Shaving (stills),
2007, video, 7 minutes 39 seconds
© Kim Ye Kim Ye, Hair-kini (uninhabited),
2008, Dreadlocks (hair), life-sized
© Kim ye Kim Ye, Studio 528 Instructor,
Foundation Sculpture/Intro to Mold Making Workshop
© Kim Ye Kim Ye, Untitled (Chair),
Found object, Latex, Soil, 5 x 5 x 12”
© Kim Ye Foundation Sculpture, Intro to Mold Making with Kim Ye
© Kim Ye Kim Ye
© Kim Ye
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> QUICK FACTS
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BIRTHPLACE:
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Beijing, China
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SCHOOLS:
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Pomona College (Claremont), 2007, B.A. studio art
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TAGS:
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fashion, mutation, body, asian-american, asian, artist
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> STATEMENT
VITALS.
An over-active, underwhelmed whirlwind of activity. This Chinese tornado is on a rampage, and believe me, you'll want to be there when she hits.
Hometown: Rockford, IL, U.S.A.
Language: Mandarin, English, Spanish
Weakness: Goodwill, The Internet, consumables
Talents: scavenging, hair-cutting, athletics
Interests: criticism, eroticism, power, voyuerism, trauma, video cameras, confrontation,
deconstruction, collaboration, and disorders of any kind.
Dislikes: still life, neutrality, comfort zones, donuts, passivity, and inactivity.
Contact: kimsu.ye@gmail.com
Blog: www.yeyak.blogspot.com
STATEMENT.
When I was 4 years old, my family moved from China to the United States. Shortly after, I began disappearing during shopping outings. As my mother flipped through the clearance racks, I would steal away and pose in department store window displays, pretending to be a mannequin. In retrospect, I think this was my attempt to gain agency—to command attention in an alien world where I was largely invisible. By placing myself in the display window, a virtual space in which to audition potential selves, I imagine that I was silently asking people to identify with me. However, it was only relatively recently that I realized how far fashion standards went beyond clothes; they manifest our culture’s implicit values regarding beauty, color, ethnicity, class, money, and morality.
Re-experiencing retail spaces as educational tools, I created the Autoerotic Series in 2007 as a starting point for questioning how we choose to visually represent ourselves. Made entirely of amber-toned latex, each visceral, wearable, skin is created from casts of various body parts. The joining of these disparate parts—sometimes forming mutated appendages—results in an ensemble that contorts, constrains, extends, and reshapes the human form. When worn, the garments connect models’ body parts in unexpected ways, broadening both the viewer and performer’s understanding of the human body. In the absence of a body, these sculptures create a negative space for passers-by to project themselves into. Thus the uninhabited latex forms may also be hung and stretched, reading as sculptures.
Presently, I am in the midst of conceptualizing a new series of pieces entitled The Summer Collection. In this new body of work, I will utilize traditional dressmaking techniques to further extend the possibilities of the human body. The addition of frames, fasteners, and different textiles, will expand on the visual vocabulary established in the previous series.
HYPE.
Matador Y Toros:
LA Weekly:
Defamer.com:
SRQ Magazine:
"Our relationship to
appearances is a complex and personal territory. Kim Ye is fearless in
her exploration of this territory and in disrupting our notions of
normalcy and beauty, through video and worn and perfomed sculptural
creations. In her video pieces, Kim uses the element of time to take
the viewer through a process of looking at the body and our actions
upon it, making us question our own discomfort with images that are in
one sense banal and in another sense disruptive of that familiarity.
But even with what is familiar, we are placed in an uncomfortable
position, looking more closely than we would choose, slowly watching an
action that may be common but is generally unobserved. Her work adds a
twist; the videos have an element of humor as they push beyond the
expected to disrupt the activities depicted-plucking, shaving-with
unexpected version or result. These pieces are astute in their ability
to make simple and powerful depictions.
"In
the worn pieces, Kim directly disrupts the form of the body. She uses
materials that relate to the skin but extend the sense of surface and
form to give the performers tails, appendages, and facial additions
that change the wearer's anatomy and presence. Are these performers
models? A living stand-in for mannequins? Or are they individuals,
embodied persences who have allowed themselves to be reinvented by the
sculptural forms they wear? It is startling and uncomfortable to stare
at a living person, to walk among and around them. We become aware of
our faze and of our participation in the roles of viewed and viewer" .
--from 2007 GLITTER catalogue
Written by Pomona College studio faculty:
Mark Allen
Sandeep Mukerjee
Michael O'Malley
Sheila Pinkel
Mercedes Teixido
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> EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS
Past Exhibitions and Events
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