Breaking Boundaries: YuYu’s Personal Journey as a Queer Artist in the NFT World

The work of Taiwanese-born artist YuLiang “YuYu” Liu is just not for the faint of coronary heart.

Mixing totally different mediums reminiscent of images, digital artwork, and efficiency, his creations are closely influenced by his personal private journey as a foreigner and member of the Asian and queer communities.

“As a queer artist and as a foreigner who got here to Europe, I struggled in the beginning. I take advantage of my art work to boost the illustration of every group,” he tells Decrypt. “It is a journey of self-discovery.”

In a discipline dominated by heterosexual males, YuYu’s work sheds gentle on a special voice, one that’s each extremely private and allows a complete group to really feel represented.

“I take advantage of my work to boost consciousness and illustration of the LGBT group. And I believe it’s significantly vital within the NFT and crypto area,” he says. “There may be nonetheless a spot in comparison with the normal artwork world by way of illustration. I nonetheless obtain quite a lot of hate messages from the crypto bros on Twitter.”

For this primary solo NFT exhibition known as “GAG,” YuYu determined to utterly rework the area of the IHAM gallery in Paris to create an immersive surroundings reflecting his personal id and journey as an artist.

All the furnishings has been lined with plastic wrap, one thing additionally utilized in intercourse events—it makes it simpler to wash the place afterward. A dimmed purple gentle envelops the whole area, and is accompanied by an industrial soundscape created in collaboration with the London-based music producer, Marcel Dune.

Three new artworks are on show, borrowing parts from each classical work and BDSM tradition. Every one examines the facility dynamics inside trendy societies: the constraints of faith, politics, and the self. They had been additionally made accessible for public sale as NFTs on SuperRare at this time.

“These are much more private than what I’ve finished till now,” says YuYu. If the humor that characterizes his work remains to be current, it is a lot darker, with themes of dying and struggling current all through.

The BDSM references additionally goal to emphasise the idea of the so-called tortured genius, exploring the themes of dominance and submission and the best way the struggles that artists must face are sometimes fetishized.

Arguably essentially the most putting art work, “Joke’s on You,” is impressed by the silence surrounding the dying of AIDS sufferers twenty years in the past.

“It is self-reflection,” he says. “As a minority, if I don’t converse up for myself, dangerous penalties will come. It additionally represents myself attempting to slot in the Western world. I’m dressed with these romantic-style equipment.”

“I additionally deal with myself as a joke, criticizing the truth that possibly I did one thing mistaken,” YuYu continues. “Lastly, the setting—with these flowers organized across the art work—symbolizes a funeral. It’s the dying of the previous YuYu, the start of a brand new chapter.”

YuYu’s journey: then and now

By changing his face and physique with the prevailing determine within the classical artworks, YuYu confronts his personal id as an Asian and homosexual artist with the normal codes of the European Golden Period, significantly the Seventeenth-century Flemish masters like Vermeer or Rembrandt.

As he explains, his creations “set up imaginative realities designed to shake conservative societal constructions and queer artwork historical past.”

YuYu, who holds a Grasp’s diploma in structure, started his journey in artwork when he relocated to Berlin in 2015. Working first as a mannequin for photographers, he shortly determined to develop into a photographer himself. In parallel, he labored along with his companion as an organizer for electro events.

From right here, he formally started his profession as an artist. He launched a solo present at SoHo Home Berlin, was revealed in magazines and books, and his art work even grew to become a part of the Tom of Finland Basis’s everlasting assortment in Los Angeles, California.

However when Covid-19 struck, every part got here to a halt.

That is when YuYu found NFTs and started experimenting with this new medium.

“For me, images is the better technique to talk with audiences,” he explains. “However coming into the Web3 discipline has opened doorways that I couldn’t in any other case have opened. NFTs haven’t solely enabled me to construct a world community for my follow, however additionally they provide new instruments to fight the rigidities of the normal artwork world.”