Experimental Artist Anicka Yi, Who Has Made Art With AI, Insects, and Smells, Is Tapped for the Next Tate Turbine Hall Commission

Anicka Yi has created giant kelp pods filled with animatronic
insects, injected live snails with oxytocin, and developed soil
whose environment is governed by A.I. Later this year, her unique
brand of oddball technology-infused art will receive its largest
stage yet. The Korean-American artist has been chosen to create the
next Turbine Hall commission at Tate Modern in London, her largest
and most ambitious project to date.

Yi’s site-specific work will take over the massive gallery space
from October 2020 to January 2021. “Anicka Yi has developed a
reputation for highly innovative work,” said Frances Morris, the
director of Tate Modern, in a statement. “Her installations are
unforgettable, using the latest scientific ideas and experimental
materials in unexpected ways. The results not only engage the
senses, but also tackle some of the big questions we face today
about humanity’s relationship to nature and technology.”

Yi, who won the Guggenheim’s Hugo Boss Prize in 2016, is perhaps
best known for incorporating scent into her work. She has recreated
the smell of Gagosian Gallery to evoke art-market prestige and
worked with a French perfumer to pinpoint what she described as
“the scent of forgetting.” She also employs unconventional
materials such as antidepressants, palm tree essence, and a
cellphone signal jammer (and that was just for a single
piece!) For her Guggenheim commission, she created an
installation using live ants.

Yi did not begin making art until her mid-30s, and had her first
solo show at New York gallery 47 Canal in 2011. The nature of her
project for Turbine Hall has not yet been revealed. One imagines
that this is in part because Yi’s work is often the product of
experiments and collaborations with scientists that coalesce at the
last minute.

In a 2017 interview with T
Magazine, Yi explained her kinship with scientists: “It’s
just that we work almost in reverse timelines: Scientists have
their hypothesis and then spend the next 20 or 30 years of their
career trying to prove it, whereas artists won’t really understand
what their hypothesis was until the end of their career.”

Recent Tubine Hall commissions—one of the most prestigious gigs
in the art world—include Kara Walker’s monumental
fountain and an artistic, interactive playground by
Superflex. The commission is sponsored by Hyundai Motor
Company.

The post Experimental Artist Anicka Yi, Who Has Made Art
With AI, Insects, and Smells, Is Tapped for the Next Tate Turbine
Hall Commission appeared first on artnet News.