Anicka Yi | Artist | East West Bank Art Program

Anicka Yi’s conceptual art and sculpture lie at the intersection of fine art, fragrance, cuisine, and science. Her installations engage the senses beyond vision – particularly smell – and she is well known for her collaborations with chemists and biologists. Born in South Korea and raised in Alabama and California, Yi studied at Hunter College and later relocated briefly to London. She began producing work in 2008, during her time with the short-lived art collective Circular File. Known for her use of unorthodox, often perishable materials, Yi’s art maintains an incongruous, constantly shifting, and provocative quality. Engaging with the ethics of smell and the natural world, her work confronts the viewer’s relationship to a wet, unruly, tactile planet. From bacterial swabs to perfumed environments, the materials in her installations blend the organic with the constructed. Her compelling formal articulations and cross-disciplinary entanglements create textured works that invite audiences to viscerally experience complex issues. Ambiguity, fragility, and mutability are inherent to Yi’s artistic practice and vision.

Yi’s work has been exhibited at Leeum, Seoul; 47 Canal, New York; the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Tate Modern, London; Gladstone Gallery, Brussels and New York; the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and many others. She was featured at the Whitney Biennial (2016) and the 58th Venice Biennale (2019). Read more