When identity is in a continual state of transformation, where does one find connection? Belonging? And what of the body in these circumstances? Where do we find home? These are the questions Xiaoping Yu, a multi-media artist who lives and works in both China and Scotland, explores in her artworks. She combines installation, video, and sculpture in order to question female identity, belonging, and the impact of culture shock on the body and the mind as she negotiates changing cultures in a changing world.
Yu considers the body to be both container and witness to the effects of these transitions. Considering the impact of unfamiliar environments upon the body and mind, she navigates the fragile boundaries between self and other, and examines the response of the body to unfamiliar environments through works which mirror the impact of these issues.
Culture shock, a mental state when presented with an alarmingly different cultural system, was the catalyst for the direction of her artworks. Moving from China to Edinburgh triggered a wide range of issues for the artist, not just the shift in geography, but all the unfamiliar rhythms: languages, living spaces and social structures. Culture shock for Yu is not only an emotional reaction to relocation, but also a physical response to a strange new world that can be triggered by these new and everyday encounters, an exchange of energy between the city and the body. As the artist herself has said, “In Edinburgh, the experience of the city impacts the body before language does.”
Through a trilogy of experimental video works, Yu began her artistic response to her changed, and continually changing, circumstances. Each of the pieces builds upon the previous one, to build a comprehensive response to the tensions she felt as she immersed herself in her new world. Site in Cowgate (2024), Shock-Safe (2024) and Shock-Under My Skin (2024), combine together to create a visual mirror which invites the viewer to explore Yu’s experience and explore their own experience of change and dislocation.
Site in Cowgate begins the trilogy. Cowgate, in Edinburgh’s Old Town, is long-renowned for its rowdy nightlife. Its proximity to student accommodation made it a primary trigger for the artist, who, like many of her peers, came from a quieter and more conservative environment. Yu’s video gathered scenes of the sights and sounds of the area to craft a vision of culture shock, the area becoming a metaphor for the tense, fractured precarity one feels when dislocated from the familiar. Broken pavements, discarded bottles, the glint of broken glass become the symbols of emotional and physical response to a life upturned. Yu encased fragments of glass in resin to show that these experiences are not simply surface responses to the unfamiliar but that their impact is long-lasting and embeds trauma and tensions in the body and mind.
Inspired by Harmonic Bridge, a film by Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger, Yu turns to sound in Shock-Safe to capture the impact of noise upon her psyche. This piece functions as a transition in the trilogy, shifting the artist’s perspective on her new-found world. The pressures and dislocating intensities of her initial encounters with Edinburgh give way to a more managed life-rhythm, as fears loosen and she gains an ability to absorb the newness. She symbolises this principally through the use of sound. Dissonant noises of streetlife which pierce the body and mind find new rhythms as Yu embraces her new environments and her body adapts to the sights and sounds of a new world.
The final piece in the trilogy, Shock-Under My Skin, is the most personal and perhaps the most experimental of the pieces. Whereas the first two pieces considered the impact of the external world and its effect upon her, this work turns inward and considers the impact of culture shock under the skin. Transforming the skin into a strange landscape, mirroring the strange geography of Edinburgh, Yu uses flickering light to emphasise the textures, timbres and movement of the skin in response to the world around us. Once again, sound plays a significant role in the piece; this time it is the sounds of the body: breath, heartbeat, and throat noises meet the low hum of streetlife to generate a sound field where inner and outer worlds meet—body and breath meet concreted steel. The film is cyclical, to represent the new rhythm of life the artist is finding.
Yu’s work follows a long history of artists, many of whom are female, who use their bodies as an instrument for their art. Well-known figures in the art world such as Marina Abramović and Tracey Emin are known for the ways in which their own bodies become a site of reflection and dialogue about issues related to the role of women in the world. The French artist Gina Pane, who was a founder and leading member of Art Corporel, the Body Art Movement in France during the 1970s, and who used her body as a site for exploring ideas around discomfort, experience and empathy, might be closer, at least in theory if not in practice. There are also many artists today whose work in the West is informed by their non-Western roots, and who, like Yu, explore the impact of the unfamiliar upon them. Do Ho Suh, Hetain Patel, and Hito Steyerl, for instance, all use video and film to document the impact of issues like immigration, dislocation, and the idea of ‘home’ in various ways.
The challenge for conceptual and multi-media artists, particularly for those who focus on their own particular life experiences, is to find ways to ensure that their concepts and ideas contain a universal aspect which allows the viewer entry into the piece of art. Yu’s work is strong when it presents the dislocations and unsettling experiences caused by huge shifts in life, and there are hints of a more subtle and mature expansion of her ideas in the trilogy of works discussed here. The next step is to capture more clearly the question of belonging and identity, particularly female identity, which she aims to address in her artworks. She seems up to the task.
Instagram @xiaooart
Xiaoping Yu Website: xiaooart.com
Images courtesy of the artist © Yiaoping Yu
This review is part of a supported series on emerging artists including Yiaoping Yu.
Article edited by Kailas Elmer
Barry Taylor writes and speaks about the intersections of philosophy, theology and contemporary culture. In past, he was the road manager for AC/DC during the Bon Scott era before becoming a Los Angeles theologian.
