Artists

Photo Credit: NIU Chun-Chiang

Yenyi Lee

Yenyi Lee is an independent curator with an M.A. in visual culture from the University of Edinburgh. Her curatorial research focuses on the multiplicity of meaning in negative space, seeing artistic practice as the expansion of ideas. Lee also specializes in collaborations with artists across diverse media. The artist co-curated the Digital Art Festival in 2020 and has presented exhibitions at institutions such as the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, NON Berlin in Germany, and OPEN SPACE BAE in Busan, South Korea. Lee is the founder of Hagai, an arts and cultural journal, and was selected for the ISCP residency program in New York in 2023, followed by a research fellowship with the Taroko Arts Residency program in 2024.

Artist
Statement.


After years of working independently as a curator, I found that when others rely on you to make decisions and take responsibility, time for information digestion and personal reflection often falls to the end of the line. I longed for the opportunity to develop an exhibition of my own, to devote considerable time to research, and to explore a wider range of practices and contexts. It was with these aspirations that I applied for a curatorial residency.

At the same time, my perception of exhibitions began to change. In recent years, driven by social media and even cultural institutions, exhibitions have taken on a more touristic character. Large-scale installations designed for visual impact and shareability, along with displays that lack engagement with historical and spatial context, have turned exhibitions into a kind of consumables.

As the residency drew to a close, I presented a curatorial research project and invited Zhen Zhen Qi, a Uyghur Ph.D. candidate in visual arts at Columbia University, for a public dialogue. Our conversation began with the urgent issue of labor automation, examining the conceptual gap between the “machines” (organized inorganics vs organizing inorganics) we speak of in theory and those currently being developed in practice. We explored how art might offer a critical counterpoint to technology and immersive aesthetics, proposing ways in which artistic practices can resist or transcend these dominant paradigms. We also questioned works labeled as artistic creations but in fact merely appropriate the form of art and the rhetoric of marketing.

Seeing how ideas take tangible form in daily life struck me most in New York. I noticed that Asian communities have begun to focus more on building local networks and making their voices heard. As for the residency, I recommend actively participating in events and reaching out to local artists. Acts that might invite gossip or hierarchical judgment in Taiwan are considered normal in New York. No medium can truly convey this rare sense of freedom.

Author: Yenyi Lee
Edited: Brix

About International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP)