Imin Yeh

Department of Art Lecture Series artist, Imin Yeh will be giving a lecture on Wednesday, October 17 in the McDonough Museum Auditorium. An interdisciplinary and project-based artist, he works in sculpture, installation, participatory events, and print. The projects use repetitive handcraft and mimicry as a strategy for exploring the issues around the unseen labor and production that lies behind our many unconsidered everyday objects. Paper is the most recurrent element in these projects. Conceptually, he choses this material because in its transformation from a commonplace material into a precious art object; it retains a human and bodily investment of time. More honestly, he chooses to work with paper because of a lifetime of confidence. It’s the material of a childhood spent cutting and building, with an almost 100% guarantee of no major loss to either bank account or limbs. The near invisibleness of his laborious projects, the utter lack of utility in either function or value, the absence of color, and the small, softly placed interventions are all a provocation to think about how much time and energy is invested in things we cannot, or choose not to see. A small object, a gesture, or a voice from the margins can reclaim a space, be a catalyst of thought, or at the very least, provide a bit of wonder and magic.