Anicka Yi

Born 1971 in Seoul, South Korea. Lives and works in New York, NY.

Leeum Anicka Yi Press 04

Leeum Anicka Yi Press 04

Exhibition view: Anicka Yi, There Exists Another Evolution but in This One, Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, 2024. Photo: © Andrea Rossetti

Introduction

Known for her multi-sensory approach to art making, Anicka Yi has radically expanded the notion of what an artwork can be and transformed exhibitions into embodied encounters. Drawing on a notion of otherness rooted in scent and taste, atypical sensoria for the visual arts realm, Yi’s works allow her audience to viscerally experience complex issues relating to social prejudice, racism, ecology, climate change, biological extinction, machines and machine learning.

Full biography

Selected works

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Gallery Exhibitions

Mutable Structures With Rosa Barba, Ann Veronica Janssens, Sojourner Truth Parsons and Anicka Yi

Mutable Structures

With Rosa Barba, Ann Veronica Janssens, Sojourner Truth Parsons and Anicka Yi

Esther Schipper Paris is delighted to present Mutable Structures featuring works by Rosa Barba, Ann Veronica Janssens, Sojourner Truth Parsons, and Anicka Yi.

October 16—December 21, 2024

Esther Schipper, Paris

A Shimmer Through The Quantum Foam Anicka Yi

A Shimmer Through The Quantum Foam

A Shimmer Through The Quantum Foam is Anicka Yi's first solo exhibition with the gallery.

September 15—October 21, 2023

Esther Schipper, Berlin

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External Exhibitions

AFTER IMAGES With Rosa Barba and Anicka Yi

AFTER IMAGES

With Rosa Barba and Anicka Yi

AFTER IMAGES With Rosa Barba and Anicka Yi Opening September 11, 2024 September 12, 2024 – April 27, 2025 Julia Stoschek Foundation Berlin

September 12, 2024—April 27, 2025

Julia Stoschek Foundation Berlin

There Exists Another Evolution but in This One Anicka Yi

There Exists Another Evolution but in This One

Anicka Yi There Exists Another Evolution but in This One Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul September 5 – December 29, 2024

September 5—December 29, 2024

Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul

Portrait of a Collection. Works from the Pinault Collection With Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Anri Sala and Anicka Yi

Portrait of a Collection. Works from the Pinault Collection

With Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Anri Sala and Anicka Yi

September 4—November 23, 2024

SONGEUN Art and Cultural Foundation

The Postnatal Egg Anicka Yi

The Postnatal Egg

For the collection of kelp pods exhibited at Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Postnatal Egg, Anicka Yi was pondering this state of amorphous potency, imaging a perpetual meta-egg that could traverse different...

March 15—September 17, 2023

Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields

Avant l'orage with works by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Pierre Huyghe, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané and Anicka Yi

Avant l'orage

with works by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Pierre Huyghe, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané and Anicka Yi

Avant l’orage invites visitors on a journey from shadow to light, through installations and works, some iconic, others new, by some fifteen artists, throughout the spaces of the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection. With works by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Pierre...

February 8—September 18, 2023

Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris

Metaspore Anicka Yi

Metaspore

Featuring more than twenty installations from 2010 until today, Metaspore at Pirelli HangarBicocca, conceived as a sensory and synesthetic experience, questions the boundaries between natural and synthetic, human and non-human, materiality and...

February 24—August 7, 2022

Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan

In Love With The World Anicka Yi

In Love With The World

What would it feel like to share the world with machines that could live in the wild and evolve on their own?

October 12, 2021—February 6, 2022

Hyundai Commission, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London

May You Live In Interesting Times

May You Live In Interesting Times

Destabilising demarcations between the organic and the synthetic, science and fiction, human and non-human, Anicka Yi’s protean creations are undergirded by what the artist describes as the “biopolitics of the senses”.

May 11—November 24, 2019

58th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy

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Featured stories

Anicka Yi’s Web of Care

Anicka Yi: ‘Everything, everywhere, all at once’

Anicka Yi: It's not enough to understand a word ... A conversation by Noemi Smolik Kunstforum

Anicka Yi: It's not enough to understand a word ... A conversation by Noemi Smolik

Life in the Sea is like a Verb Spike Art Magazine

Life in the Sea is like a Verb

Spike Art Magazine

The 10 best booths at Paris+ par Art Basel Artsy

The 10 best booths at Paris+ par Art Basel

Berlin is the meeting place this fall for the international contemporary art scene Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Berlin is the meeting place this fall for the international contemporary art scene

Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Algorithms in the primordial soup: Anicka Yi exhibits at Galerie Esther Schipper Berliner Zeitung

Algorithms in the primordial soup: Anicka Yi exhibits at Galerie Esther Schipper

Berliner Zeitung

10 Must-See Shows at Berlin Art Week 2023 Artsy

10 Must-See Shows at Berlin Art Week 2023

5 Shows On Our Radar Spike Art Magazine

5 Shows On Our Radar

Spike Art Magazine

Anicka Yi in 'Bodies of Knowledge' Art21

Artist Talk with Anicka Yi at DEMO2023 New Museum, New York

New Museum Theater, New York

Artist Talk with Anicka Yi at DEMO2023

New Museum, New York

Thursday June 22, 5 - 5:45 pm

Now Representing – Anicka Yi

Now Representing – Anicka Yi

Esther Schipper is delighted to announce the representation of Anicka Yi.

Anicka Yi’s paintings are living, autonomous creatures Text by Megan Hullander, Interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist

Anicka Yi’s paintings are living, autonomous creatures

Text by Megan Hullander, Interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist

December 12, 2022

Anicka Yi: Intelligent floating machines inspired by nature TED Talk

Anicka Yi: Intelligent floating machines inspired by nature

Taking cues from soft robotics and the natural world, conceptual artist Anicka Yi builds lighter-than-air machines that roam and react like autonomous life forms. Her floating "aerobes" inspire us to think about new ways of living with machines -- and to ponder how they could evolve into living creatures. "What if our machines could be more than just our tools, and instead, a new type of companion species?" she asks.

August 19, 2022

Anicka Yi: ‘I’m Very, Very Squeamish With Culture’ ArtReview

Anicka Yi: ‘I’m Very, Very Squeamish With Culture’

October 11, 2021

Anicka Yi On Filling The Turbine Hall With Her Sensual Chemistry Experiments Vogue UK

Anicka Yi On Filling The Turbine Hall With Her Sensual Chemistry Experiments

October 8, 2021

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Films

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A Shimmer Through The Quantum Foam Anicka Yi

A Shimmer Through The Quantum Foam

Anicka Yi

Publications

Anicka Yi Metaspore

Anicka Yi

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