Finalist 2018
Yushi Li
Based in London, Yushi Li is a Chinese artist working mainly with the photographic medium. After obtaining a Masters in Photography, she is currently undertaking a doctorate in Arts and Humanities at the RCA. In 2018, Li was selected from among the artists of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries. Her work mainly questions the way we look at the issues of gender, desire and sexuality, culminating in a survey on male representation as an erotic subject in the light of social networks.
Your Reservation Is Confirmed, 2018
In the project Your Reservation Is Confirmed, I use photography as a method to explore the commodification of our desire in an era of rapid social and societal change.
I rent my "ideal" house via Airbnb, and I reserve my "ideal" man via a life modeling site to build my "ideal" images. When I photograph a man, my mind imagines each time a scenario involving feelings or fantasies. I thus place different men in various domestic spaces to present them in a banal and vulnerable way.
By showing myself inside the photograph, I try to create a dynamic relationship between the object looked at, the viewer and the third party looking at it. Instead of simply reversing the gender roles between men and women, I try to question, through my photographs, the binary vision of gender, as well as the idea of monogamy and domesticity.
Through these intimate encounters with different male strangers in fake domestic places, I get out of the digital screen these instant illusions of the desired life. My work seeks to play with the balance of power inherent in the gaze, as well as to question the current staging of eroticism and intimacy in the era of the image.
I rent my "ideal" house via Airbnb, and I reserve my "ideal" man via a life modeling site to build my "ideal" images. When I photograph a man, my mind imagines each time a scenario involving feelings or fantasies. I thus place different men in various domestic spaces to present them in a banal and vulnerable way.
By showing myself inside the photograph, I try to create a dynamic relationship between the object looked at, the viewer and the third party looking at it. Instead of simply reversing the gender roles between men and women, I try to question, through my photographs, the binary vision of gender, as well as the idea of monogamy and domesticity.
Through these intimate encounters with different male strangers in fake domestic places, I get out of the digital screen these instant illusions of the desired life. My work seeks to play with the balance of power inherent in the gaze, as well as to question the current staging of eroticism and intimacy in the era of the image.
