FOTODOKS
Festival for contemporary
documentary photography
FOTODOKS
Festival for contemporary documentary photography

Yun Ping Li

回家 (huí jiā), 2017–ongoing

In Yun Ping Li’s collaborative, site-specific self-portraiture performances, his body assumes the function of an archive, visual author and stage prop all rolled into one. His series 回家 (huí jiā) equates to an autobiographical assemblage that can be viewed as an ongoing exploration of representational processes – one that adds an action photo each time the artist moves apartment or stages a new exhibition. The Mandarin Chinese character 回 (huí) essentially means ‘circle’, ‘time’, ‘turn around’ or ‘reply’, while 家 (jiā) means ‘home’ or ‘family’. Combining the two expresses the idea of ‘returning home’, a universal wish that is consciously addressed in Li’s visual language by creating the space for self-awareness and self-care. Mediating between the inner world and the world outside as an instrument of self-determination, his camera not only eludes over-simplistic definitions but also incorporates the viewer in order to lay bare the gaze directed at a transmasculine body ‘from outside’. Moreover, the theme of return is understood here as a physical transition: finding one’s way back to a body that is experienced as familiar and envisaged as a home.

Yun Ping Li

回家 (huí jiā), 2017–ongoing

In Yun Ping Li’s collaborative, site-specific self-portraiture performances, his body assumes the function of an archive, visual author and stage prop all rolled into one. His series 回家 (huí jiā) equates to an autobiographical assemblage that can be viewed as an ongoing exploration of representational processes – one that adds an action photo each time the artist moves apartment or stages a new exhibition. The Mandarin Chinese character 回 (huí) essentially means ‘circle’, ‘time’, ‘turn around’ or ‘reply’, while 家 (jiā) means ‘home’ or ‘family’. Combining the two expresses the idea of ‘returning home’, a universal wish that is consciously addressed in Li’s visual language by creating the space for self-awareness and self-care. Mediating between the inner world and the world outside as an instrument of self-determination, his camera not only eludes over-simplistic definitions but also incorporates the viewer in order to lay bare the gaze directed at a transmasculine body ‘from outside’. Moreover, the theme of return is understood here as a physical transition: finding one’s way back to a body that is experienced as familiar and envisaged as a home.