Yi Hsuan Lai, Echo, 2x15x.5”, Mixed media
Please join us for an artist talk and closing reception with Yi Hsuan Lai in conversation with Elise Thompson on March 20, at 6:30pm in the NARS Project Space.
Yi Hsuan Lai will discuss her exhibition Gut Feeling in conversation with Elise Thompson.
Gut Feeling explores the interplay between body and objects, physical and psychological landscapes through photography and photographic collages. Yi Hsuan uses discarded materials and her body to create assemblages for two-and three-dimensional photographs. The work's visceral and ephemeral quality mirrors the body's fluidity, complexities of self-identity, and Otherness. Materiality sparks a dialogue between tangible sensibility and tactile ambiguity in a space. Her work traverses construction and deconstruction, animate and inanimate, revaluing one-time-use materials into bodily and otherworldly representations. Yi Hsuan Lai is a NARS Alumni from 2020.
Yi Hsuan Lai received an MFA in photography from School of Visual Arts in New York City (2020) and in 2023 she received support from NYFA’s immigrant artist program. She also received residency fellowships from Light Work in 2024 and Vermont Studio Center in 2023. Her work was among LensCulture’s Critics’ Top 10 in 2022. Her solo exhibition, Anonymous Town, appeared in SPRING/BREAK Art Show (New York City, 2020). Group exhibitions include Portraits Beyond Faces at the FLOOR Gallery (Korea, 2023), Today is Yesterday’s Tomorrow at the PH Museum Photo Festival (Bologna, 2022), Photo London (UK, 2023), If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home By Now at Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY, 2021), and Smart Objects, Flattened Images at Well Well Project (Portland, OR, 2022).
Elise Thompson (b. 1988, Cincinnati, OH) received an MFA at Florida State University in 2016. Residencies include Vermont Studio Center, The Wassaic Artist Residency, The Maple Terrace Artist Residency Program, and ChaNorth Artist Residency. She’s been published in New American Paintings South #124, Friend of the Artist vol. 8, VAST Magazine vol. 1, Maake Magazine 14, and Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art. Recent exhibitions include The Spartanburg Art Museum (SC), The Wassaic Project (NY), Paradice Palase (NYC), Laundromat Art Space (FL), Westobou Gallery (GA), Soft Times Gallery (CA), Florida Mining Gallery (FL), SPRING/BREAK Art Show (NYC), Ceysson & Bénétière (NYC), and The Delaware Contemporary (DE). She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
