![]() While there’s a certain surreal, dystopian quality to the sleek decks, there’s also a sense of power. You can be the receiver and you can also be the provider in this advertisement system.” Narcissism, 2019. What I feel now about that consumer culture is that a lot of things are approachable. Now, it’s all micro-influencing, being so loyal to influencers who maybe only have 80,000 followers. Back then, the product and the face of the product itself weren’t so tied to one another. “I was thinking a lot about how people did advertisements so differently in the past. The merging of women and objects makes for a visual commentary on the objectification of women and the ways they’re exploited for marketing. In Smoke Me, Yuyi transfers her body onto a series of cigarettes and captures them as they begin to burn. She puts women, usually herself and usually nude, on objects. If the first half of Yuyi’s art involved placing objects on people, the latter half, which the collection with Skateroom captures, does the opposite. In some ways, the project is a warning: things that were once cool easily become cringe. Over time, the project has become an internet archive, where the platforms, people and things that mattered so much to us now feel nostalgic. Now, only Boomers use Facebook, and Snapchat no one really uses.” Smoke me, 2019. Yuyi points to the death of online platforms as an example: “I realized one day that all this social media will be irrelevant-which is true. With the advent of digital platforms, she explains, “everyone got a ticket to become famous, to become relevant, but also you to be forgotten in the next second.” Such is the short lifespan of our hype-focused economy. It’s been nearly a decade since Yuyi began to shoot with temporary tattoos, and the distance from the project allows her to see how it inadvertently captured the fast-paced hype cycles we live by now. In Yuyi’s photos, subject and object become one, just as people become a brand-a commodity to be sold online. ![]() The temporary tattoo project felt not unlike an episode of Black Mirror where digital identities, online clout and follower count follow us, influencing how others treat us in real life. At a time when influencer culture and social media were just starting to take off, the work became a prescient look at how what happens on the internet and who you are online doesn’t exist in a vacuum. She shot the temporary tattoos on other subjects, sourcing models on Tinder or Instagram and covering them with the emblems of their digital profiles. Still, the post garnered so much attention that Yuyi went viral again, sparking a new direction for her career. “I took cyber symbols and made them into temporary tattoos and put them on my back, then posted an image on Facebook, but that was only to promote my swimsuit collection.” “I was promoting the swimsuit collection around the Facebook era, and Instagram was still quite niche,” Yuyi tells Observer. While working on Clay Project, her line of bubblegum-colored swimwear featuring images of her pottery in digital Dada-esque style, she was selling temporary tattoos of social media iconography. After graduating from Shih Chien University in Taipei with a degree in fashion design, she transitioned from fashion to fine art by accident. Yuyi’s road to virality is a winding one. ![]() Teetering between provocative advertisements, fashion editorials and unique portraiture, the decks delve into consumerism and identity in the post-internet age-themes that have underscored her work since her former fashion days. The recently released collaborative collection, which turns skate decks into canvases featuring Yuyi’s sleek and glossy photos, falls in neatly with the organization’s previous collabs featuring the work of Jeff Koons, Yoshitomo Nara, Andy Warhol and other acclaimed artists. Now, at 32, the New York-based artist is adding another buzzy project to her decorated career: a collaboration with Skateroom, an arts organization that combines skate culture and art history to champion social justice. Her work went viral again, landing her a collaboration with Gucci, a spot on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in 2018 and her first solo exhibition. By age 27, the young artist transitioned her bold fashion aesthetic into striking and playful photography that all but conquered the internet. Then, it was for her dreamy swimsuit collection, Clay Project, released in 2014. ![]() At age 23, Taiwanese artist John Yuyi went viral for the first of what would be many times. ![]()
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