In Love With The World by Anicka Yi

Installation image of Anicka Yi's In Love With The World, Hyundai Commission 2021, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern; October 2021 – January 2022; Anicka Yi born 1971; Will Burrard-Lucas; I03277

Anicka Yi

Portrait of Anicka Yi by Jae An Lee

Portrait of Anicka Yi, 2024
Photo by Jae An Lee

Anicka Yi draws on scientific inquiry to explore human existence, the symbiotic relationships between living and non-living forms, and the inherently mutable nature of the universe and its systems.

Working across installation, sculpture, painting, and immersive environments, Yi invites viewers to consider the porous boundaries between art and biology, human and non-human intelligence, and natural and constructed worlds. Yi addresses human anxieties surrounding impermanence, the passage of time, and cultural mythologies through a wide range of disciplines including microbiology, synthetic biology, and artificial intelligence research.

Yi’s studio functions as a laboratory where she conducts trials and tests hypotheses, often collaborating with specialists such as software engineers, forensic chemists, and perfumers to refine and develop her ideas. Through these interdisciplinary exchanges, she reimagines future possibilities in expansive and imaginative terms. Yi incorporates unorthodox, volatile, and intangible materials in her practice—yeast, fungi, bacteria, tempura batter, glycerin soap, and living organisms—foregrounding the agency of the matter itself. Environmental, bacterial, and entropic forces shape her works, challenging traditional notions of permanence and authorship. Among her early bodies of work, the Tempura Fried Flowers series (2010–present) features plants and flowers in a coarse tempura batter, producing organic forms that become greasy, unstable, and pungent. In subsequent projects such as You Can Call Me F (2015), Kombucha Sculptures (2015), and Kelp Sculptures (2019–present), Yi expanded her use of organic and microbial materials. She has also described air as sculptural—an invisible medium that can be shaped and activated. In her Dryer Door series (2014–15) and Immigrant Caucus (2017), she uses fragrance as a sculptural component, enabling visitors to trace the contours and movements of air through scent. More recent bodies of work—including Aerobes (2021), Quantum Foam Paintings (2022–24), Alien Ocean Paintings (2022–25), Radiolaria Series (2023–present), and Saturn Paintings (2025–present)—extend her inquiry into cosmology, biological systems, and the unseen forces structuring contemporary life.

In her early twenties, Yi lived in London, working across a broad range of freelance jobs including writing advertising copy and styling fashion shoots before relocating to New York in 1996. She studied film theory at Hunter College, New York (2000–03) and at the University of California, Los Angeles (1989–90), before devoting herself to her artistic practice. Yi has presented solo exhibitions internationally, including You Can Call Me F, The Kitchen, New York (2015); Jungle Stripe, The Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany (2016); Life Is Cheap, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2017); In Love With The World, Tate Modern, London (2021); Metaspore, Pirelli HangarBicoca, Milan (2021); There Is Another Evolution, But In This One, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2024); There Is Another Evolution, But In This One, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2025); and Karmic Debt, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas (2025). Yi will present her first large-scale outdoor project, a major site-specific installation, at Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, New York, which will open to the public on May 17, 2026.

Her work has been presented in numerous group exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); May You Live In Interesting Times, 58th Venice Biennale, Italy (2019); New Order: Art and Technology in the Twenty-First Century, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2019); Catastrophe and Recovery, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2021); Mountain/Time, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2022); Flowing Moon, Embracing Land, 3rd Jeju Biennale, South Korea (2023); Dream Machines, DESTE Foundation Project Space, Slaughterhouse, Hydra, Greece (2023); Whose Forest, Whose World, Daegu Art Museum, South Korea (2024); Between Pixel and Pigment: Hybrid Painting in Postdigital Times, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany (2024); and Natural Mystics, The Warehouse, Dallas, Texas (2025–26), among many others. She was the subject of the 2023–24 research season at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, titled Anicka Yi is on our mind. She is included in the forthcoming group exhibition New Humans: Memories of the Future, opening on March 21, 2026, at the New Museum, New York, which will inaugurate the New Museum’s expanded building.

Yi received The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 2011 and The Hugo Boss Prize in 2016. In 2019, she was awarded the Transformations of the Human Artist Fellowship from the Berggruen Institute. Her 2020 Tate Turbine Hall Hyundai Commission resulted in her seminal exhibition In Love With The World, presented the following year at the Tate Modern, London. She was a visiting artist at the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology Visiting Artists Program, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2014–15); the artist in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California (2018); and a visiting artist at the Stanford Arts Institute, Stanford University, California (2022–23). In 2024, she received the Josep Luís Sert Practitioner in the Arts residency from the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University,Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Yi’s performance works span collaborative and solo presentations at international venues, including Un-Spa, Albion, New York (2008), and Circular File Channel, Performa 09, New York (2009), both created with Josh Kline and Jon Santos. Subsequent projects include Nuts in May, Jack Hanley Gallery, New York (2010), and Esprit de She, The High Line, New York (2014). Most recently, Yi and Kline reconvened to present Studio Visit, a curatorial project and installation on view at Performance Space New York through April 11, 2026.

Works by Yi are held in major public collections worldwide, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Tate, London, among others. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Grabbing At Newer Vegetables by Anicka Yi

Anicka Yi, Grabbing At Newer Vegetables, 2015, plexiglas, agar, female bacteria, fungus, 214.6 × 62.2 cm. Installation view, The Kitchen, New York, 2015. Photo by Agostino Osio © 2026 Anicka Yi / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Lifestyle  Wars by Anicka Yi

Anicka Yi, Lifestyle Wars, 2017, ants, mirrored Plexiglas, Plexiglas, two-way mirrored glass, LED lights, epoxy resin, glitter, aluminum racks with rackmount server cases and ethernet cables, metal wire, foam, acrylic, aquarium gravel, imitation pearls, overall dimensions variable. Detail view, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2017. Photo by Joerg Lohse © 2026 Anicka Yi / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Biologizing the Machine (tentacular trouble) by Anicka Yi

Anicka Yi, Biologizing The Machine (tentacular trouble), 2019, kelp, acrylic, animatronic moths, concrete, water, overall dimensions variable. Installation view, 58th Venice Biennale, 2019. Photo by Renato Ghiazza © 2026 Anicka Yi / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Biologizing the Machine (spillover zoonotica) by Anicka Yi

Anicka Yi, Biologizing The Machine (spillover zoonotica), 2022, glass vitrines, powder-coated steel, mud, calcium carbonate, calcium sulfate, egg yolks, cellulose, Raspberry Pi 4, Waveshare 2.7-inch e-Paper Display, SGX Sensor Board, and H2S Electrochemical Sensor, overall variable dimensions. Commissioned and produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan © 2026 Anicka Yi / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Installation view of There Exists Another Evolution, But In This One by Anicka Li at the Leeum Museum

Installation view, Anicka Yi: There Exists Another Evolution, But In This One, Leeum Museum of Art 2024. Photograph by Andrea Rossetti, courtesy Leeum Museum of Art © 2026 Anicka Yi / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Karmic Debt by Anicka Yi

Anicka Yi, Each Branch Of Coral Holds Up The Light Of The Moon, 2024, animated color video with sound, 16:04 min. Exhibition view, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2025 © 2026 Anicka Yi / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York