Anicka Yi

Anicka Yi was born in 1971 in Seoul, South Korea. She lives and works in New York City, USA.

Anicka Yi is one of the visiting artists at the Stanford University (2022-23). In 2022 the artist was invited to present a TED talk at the TED2022 Conference in Vancouver. Previously, she held positions of artist fellow at the Berggruen Institute (2019) and at the MIT CAST- Center for Art Science and Technology (2014). Yi has been awarded Tate Turbine Hall Hyundai Commission (2020), Hugo Boss Prize (2016) and The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2011).

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. Yi’s practice is cross-disciplinary and presents knowledge from art, science and technology in compelling formal articulations.

Part of a wider political critique of humanity’s exceptionalist claim among organisms and its far-reaching repercussions, coexistence and existential entanglements are explored by works that employ biochemical interactions, often using materials in a state of elemental ambiguity. Scent travels through air, microbes color soil, machines mimic insects or float as tentacled amoeba-like shapes through space guided by their moods and motivations. Hybridity, fragility and mutability is inherent to Yi’s œuvre and thought, foregrounding the interconnectness of all things.

In 2023 the artist will launch her Metaspore initiative, an artist-led project that seeks to bring vanguard thinkers from diverse backgrounds and disciplines together in action.

Anicka Yi’s solo exhibitions include: Anicka Yi: Metaspore, Pirelli HangarBicoca, Milan (2022); In Love With The World, Hyundai Commission, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London (2021); Life Is Cheap, The The 2016 Hugo Boss Prize, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2017); Jungle Stripe, Fridericianum, Kassel (2016); 7,070,430K of Digital Spit, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2015); 6,070,430K of Digital Spit, List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2015); You Can Call Me F, The Kitchen, New York (2015); Death, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio (2014).

Her work was presented in May You Live in Interesting Times, 58th Venice Biennale (2019), The Marvelous Cacophony, 57th October Salon, Belgrade (2018), Development, the inaugural Okayama Art Summit (2016), The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do?), 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016), among other biennials and triennials.

Selected group exhibitions include: Whose Forest, Whose World, Daegu Art Museum, Seoul (2024);

AVANT L'ORAGE, Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection, Paris, France (2023); Symbionts: Contemporary Artists and the Biosphere, List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge (2022); Mountain/Time, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2022); Catastrophe and Recovery, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2021); Psychic Wounds: On Art & Trauma, The Warehouse, Dallas (2020); New Order: Art and Technology in the Twenty-First Century, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2019); In Tune with the World, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2018); Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2018); Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon, New Museum, New York (2017); The Dream of Forms, Palais De Tokyo, Paris (2017); .com/.cn, K11 Art Foundation, co-presented by KAF and MoMA PS1, Hong Kong (2017); Jaguars and Electric Eels, Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin (2017); The Case of the Osmanthus Flower Jelly, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (2017); Faisons de l’inconnu un allié, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2016); Under the Clouds: From Paranoia to the Digital Sublime, Museu du Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto (2015); THEM, Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2015); Love of Technology, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami (2013); Some End of Things, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2013); das Ding!, Swiss Institute Contemporary Art, New York (2013); THE LOG-O-RITHMIC, Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo, Bergamo (2012); No More Presents, organized by Ajay Kurian, Artist’s Institute, New York (2011).

Yi’s work is held in the collections of various institutions including: Aishti Foundation, Beirut; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; Dikeou Collection, Denver; Fondation Galeries Lafayette, Paris; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf/Berlin; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Pinault Collection, Paris and Venice; Rubell Museum, Miami/Washington DC; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Modern, London; The Warehouse, Dallas; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Williams College, Massachusetts.

Portrait © Lorenzo Palmieri. Courtesy of the artist, Glasdstone Gallery, Esther Schipper, and Pirelli HangarBicocca.