For more than a decade, Anicka Yi has merged the technosphere with the biosphere, creating multisensory works that probe what she calls the “biopolitics of the senses.” Using materials like bacteria, scent, and tempura-fried flowers, Yi highlights the fragile yet resilient interdependence of life, embedding questions of mortality and transformation into her practice.

This exhibition—Yi’s first major exhibition in Beijing and the most comprehensive survey of her work to date—unfolds across spaces that evoke laboratories, spacecraft, and corporate interiors, heightening the tension between containment and interdependence. Anchoring the survey is Mr. Taxi for GG (2012), an early work that signals Yi’s enduring interest in impermanence and the porous boundaries between human and nonhuman entities. Subsequent projects expand these concerns into scent (Walking on Two Paths at Once, 2023), sculptural series such as the luminous Kelp Pods and animatronic Radiolaria, and Another You (2024), which employs genetically engineered bacteria to challenge conventional notions of kinship and identity.

Yi also embraces emerging technologies: her Quantum Foam Paintings apply machine learning to painting, while Each Branch of Coral Holds Up the Light of the Moon (2024) debuts her “Emptiness” software, an algorithmic system trained on her studio’s output to imagine a creative process that could extend beyond her own lifetime.

Together, these works stage an evolving dialogue between organic and artificial life, offering audiences a vision of futures where biology, technology, and humanity are inseparably intertwined.

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