HUI YE
MULTIMEDIA ARTIS
“Researching
and deconstructing
the relation of sound
and moving image,
exploring the
many layers of
the definition of
social
identity.”
#SOUND #DIGITAL #GENDER #IDENTITY #FABULATION #ELECTRONICS #HACKING #INSTALLATION #VIDEO #MULTIMEDIA #NEO-COLONIAL #PERFORMANCE
BIO. Hui Ye is an artist and composer based in Vienna, Austria. Her works span on different media: video/film, installation, composition and live sound performance.
In her recent projects, Hui Ye raises the question of how social identity of individual is being shaped by the different cultural/political contexts. Due to her research on the social-political aspect of sounds and music culture, she attempts to open another perspective of reflecting the function and impact of music and sounds in contemporary society.
Hui Ye received several scholarships and prizes, i.a. state scholarship for composition by BKA Austria 2015 and Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2018.
WATCH VIDEO HERE
The serene garden (2019)
Video installation
Through the subtle voice of a meditation instructor, the viewer is ushered into a soothing journey encompassing peaceful rituals of gardening, shedding lights on the artificiality of nature in different cultural and historical contexts. The artist juxtaposes various garden landscapes from China and Europe as well as the process of constructing a miniature Zen garden with diverse home decorations. While emphasising the mutual affection and at times a misconstruction of garden design with often stereotypical aesthetics and traditions, the video demonstrates the absurdity of the mimicking nature in decorative products.
Photos: © Hui Ye
The full color makeup session (2016)
Video Installation
There are many makeup tutorial videos on YouTube to achieve the Asian beauty, a perfect appearance of “a female Asian gangster” (quoted from the exact word spoken by one of the YouTube makeup-tutor). In The full color makeup session, Hui Ye imitates the whole process of makeup to get the same look of the Asian beauty, transforming herself into someone else, the ideal image s of the “Asien Baby Girl” that is projected on her Asian-looking body by others. Exaggerating the desire of pursuing the beauty, while connecting it with the whole process of racial construction, her video asks how the idea of beauty are constructed, gendered, sexualized.
Photos: ©Romana Hagyo & Silke Maier-Gamauf
WATCH VIDEO HERE
Quick Code Service (2018-19)
Video installation, short film
In the documentary-style video work Quick Code Service, Hui Ye investigates the relationship between real and virtual spheres of life by reconstructing her own identity within the structures of WeChat, one of the most important digital communication apps in contemporary China. Without being physically present in the country, the artist asks her friends there to use the QR code, which represents her profile on WeChat platform, in different ways and places, thereby making her digital identity a part of the Chinese social network. In this work, she aims at reintegrating herself in a radically changed Chinese society after being absent for fourteen years in order to overcome contemporary alienation with digital means.