Kim Ye is an LA-based artist with frankly an astounding volume of work. Ranging from sculpture to videos, paintings to live performances – she pushes at the boundaries of what is “art,” exploring those lines between “performance art” and simply “performance.” Where are the lines drawn between “live art” and “spectacle,” what is the relationship between the artist and audience, or the performer and viewer? What modes of exchange are acceptable in these relationships, and at which scale do they take place? Who holds the power – is there power in letting go of control? These are all questions Kim Ye addresses in her works, whether through latex molds or shared live experiences. Following her recent participation in Mutant Salon’s Festival De Las Muertas at the Hammer Museum, we catch up with Kim Ye to reflect on her artistic practice so far and what she plans to tackle next. This interview is a direct dive into some of the deepest questions at the core of Kim Ye’s work, so familiarize yourselves… and step on in.

 

“Too Much Is How Much I Want” Kim Ye (2012).

 

Art Zealous: Is there something intrinsic to latex that satisfies you, as opposed to other materials capable of casting? Is it something visceral? How it can conform to both soft bodies and hard forms – but the result is something very pliable and… stretchy?

KY: Liquid latex conforms to the surface it is slathered upon, acting as a perfect mirror, but without a form of its own. Different than a solid mold-making material like plaster, the latex mold’s flexibility and reversibility is what captures me. That each crease, crevasse, bump, and nodule of the original object can be captured and inverted to create a new object that is both opposite and adjacent to its source has a profundity that is difficult for me to articulate with words. The new thing is a ghost, an imitation, and dependent on its parent object, but it is undoubtedly its own thing. I think about assimilation (of immigrants into new societies and of individuals into institutions), inheritance (from family, from generations), and projection/introjection (of qualities, of needs, of deficiencies) in terms of the way it functions as a reproductive process that is at once as suffocating as it is generative.

 

“We Did This Together” Kim Ye (2013).

 

“Slash Fiction” Kim Ye (2013).

 

KY: If you’re talking about vulcanized latex though, it’s something different. This is the smooth latex fabric that fetish clothing, catsuits, and sensory deprivation hoods are made of. In this case, the material is like the casing of a sausage – compacting a body’s meat into impossibly smooth contours. I only started working with this type of latex sheeting a couple years ago. Because it’s a material that requires a lot of precision to manipulate, it speaks much more to the fetishism of things than its liquid cousin. Mainly used to clothe the body, vulcanized latex is cut apart and pasted together – not slathered on an object. Thus I use this type of material to become intimate with graphics, whereas the liquid latex is used to becoming intimate with bodies and objects. (see Vicki’s as an example of a work made with this material)

 

 

“Vicki’s” Kim Ye (2014).

 

Art Zealous: Much of your work is very performative, be it videos or live performances or sculptural pieces. How, then, do you position your latex paintings? 

KY: The concept of performativity, of making ourselves socially intelligible through our actions and thus creating an identity in the eyes of others, is something that I explore repeatedly through my practice. Every subject is an object to someone else, so how do others’ experience of us, of me, as an object have a direct impact on my conception of the nature of the world? I think about the pros and cons of conformity, the privileges bestowed upon those who successfully embody the codes of the world around us, the vulnerability of those who depart (either willingly or forcibly) from the traditions and are then read as non-intelligible (queer), and how the feedback loop that results from interpersonal interactions is complicated and fragments reality. Like a beam of light hitting a gem, the different facets of one’s created identity splits the single vector into an array of possibility.

 

Still taken from documentation of “Domestic Escape Artist”, a performance staged in installation “Get Away Car”, Kim Ye (2012).

 

KY: The pieces you mention above act as a window or portal – allowing the viewer to follow one of the split beams to where it hits the wall. The pieces from the FemDom POV, and Chinese Dream series throw into relief direct experiences from very specific, perhaps conflicting, positions.  The images I choose to translate into this medium are from photographs taken candidly from daily life. As flat pieces, they are created in reverse with the top layer being applied first, often with rudimentary tools like chip brushes and ketchup bottles. These clumsy implements and the layering process abstracts the image for those unfamiliar with the subject matter, creating an in-group (or sort of hanky code or beacon) for those who usually find themselves outside or operating undercover in the mainstream.

 

“You Deserve Nice Things [er•mez]” Kim Ye (2015).

AZ: Of course, it also seems that some of your paintings are extremely performative, such as the Man Around the House series. For a work like Or Bust, where we assume you are obliquely referencing the enso, or Please Wash Your Hands, the lines seem to be a little more blurred. Do you see them as operating like the works we mentioned in the last question, or are they more performative? Is there even a distinction to be made between “document” and “object”? 

KY: The process of making the more pictorial latex paintings (above) and the ones you mention in this question are quite different. The pieces you mention in this question are made by slathering liquid latex directly to people and objects and then peeled off – acting as an index of our bodies together. These 3D objects are then flattened into 2 dimensions to be preserved and/or examined like a microscope slide. While the former pieces function as paintings, these pieces are closer to collage. I collect impressions from the people and things around me and recombine them in a fantasy space to create a fiction that communicates more truth than straight documentation.

 

Left: “Or Bust” Kim Ye (2013). Right: “A Man around the House [Green Apple]” Kim Ye (2013).

 

“Please Wash Your Hands” Kim Ye (2015).

 

AZ: A lot of your earlier work focuses on food and forms of physical consumption, how have those trajectories changed, adapted, or narrowed over the course of your practice? Especially in relation to your explorations in power dynamics both physical (BDSM) and as manifested in political and economic structures (Dominate Yourself and performances with Christine Wang satirizing landlord-tenant or gallerist-assistant relations)? 

KY: Eating is an intimate act and, socially, food can act as both a binder and a repellent. The act of determining what one will or will not consume is an assertion of control. Eating and feeding can be a way to demonstrate love and care, while turning away from certain foods can be a way to draw boundaries or separation between bodies. Much of my earlier work was very focused on the relationship between the individual and herself: the isolated body, the individual as a unit. However, as my practice has developed, my work has increasingly become a way to examine the ties that bind individuals to one another in dyads, family units, subcultures, and larger communities. Those ties can be economic, erotic, platonic, mutually beneficial, exploitative, amongst others. The examination of the various boundaries and the liminal spaces where distinct units rub up against one another in specific contexts remain a consistent object of observation and examination in my work.

 

  

Left: “Synapse A” Kim Ye (2010). Right: “Synapse B” Kim Ye (2010).

 

Photo documentation of “Dominate Yourself”, 1 hr performance led by Kim Ye (2015-16).

 

AZ: Speaking of satire, much of your work is really, awfully, funny. When you make works like Ultimate Match or Art Dude or Polite Fiction, does that come from a place of self-irony and humor or a place of frustration? A mix of both?

KY: I love comedy and in my experience, comedy is often fueled by a poignant sense of sadness, or non-belonging. Mixing laughter with tears is often the best way to broach subjects that are uncomfortable and/or charged in a way that finds a receptive ear. As much as it is a way to express observations without judgment to viewers, it’s also a way for me to care for myself and self-soothe. In a similar way that fetishes might develop as a way to have power over situations that were uncomfortable and controllable at the time – transforming uneasiness into erotic attraction – comedy has the same ability to turn hardship and shitty circumstances into pure gold.

 

Still from “Art Dude”, a 3-episode video collaboration with Veronique d’Entremont. Kim Ye (2013).

 

  

Photo documentation of “Polite Fiction [40 Hours]” Kim Ye (2010).

 

AZ: Back to subject of objects, your sculptures seem to evoke psychological spaces of questioning. Their physical presences very effectively cue issues of voyeurism, privacy, class, income, and gender, to name a few. They share a kind of “pathetic” quality – some kind of emptiness or lack of vitality. When we were discussing Narcissister’s mask you commented that it makes her face more sexualized than ever, and yet the mask also prevents us from objectifying (and thereby sexualizing) her body as that of a “human” female’s. Is there something similar at play in your “deflated” objects (in particular of Profile Pic and Family-Pak), whereby being so obviously non-human the material body communicates a pathos more deeply than a more “natural” depiction ever could?

KY: Yes, exactly. I think in both the pieces you mentioned, there is an aspirational quality that is both proud and pathetic. An aspiration’s compliment is longing for what is incomplete, imperfect, or absent. The pathos I think comes from holding the two sides together in a way that accepts and describes rather than criticizes or judges. In addition, I think the line between human and non-human entities are over emphasized. In concepts like OOO (object-oriented ontology), one is encouraged to take a less anthropological-centric approach and regard not only non-human, but non-organic matter as neighbors in existence. This idea that objects have experiences that are outside of their relationship to humans (even if they are made by and for humans) is a horizontal, equalizing ethic that influences my work and my relationship to the objects I make.

 

 

Left: “That’s Cute” Kim Ye (2011). Right: “Profile Pic” Kim Ye (2012). 

 

“Family Pac” Kim

 

AZ: You had said that the act of zipping something together felt somehow more purposeful than simply stitching up what we might call “the skin” of your sculptures. Do you think about these casts and frames as a kind of skin-and-bones? Is there a satisfaction from zipping up or even “stuffing in” that is analogous to fitting a body in clothes or more metaphorically choosing how to present yourself (on any given day)? And the discomfort that one may feel in trying various “skins” when they don’t always “fit”?

KY: The use of zippers in my sculptures exhibits a level of care and precision that suturing simply doesn’t. Its inclusion regards the sculpture as a mutable object with a trajectory that I may not be able to predict. It’s not literally connected to the body and clothing for me, but more about the idea of being able to prepare and give access to a baby whose future I cannot predict. In this way, it’s kind of maternal – an act of nurturing with the tools one has – rather than a stuffing a body into conformity.

 

“No Reason to Leave” Kim Ye (2013).

 

“Slippery Drawers” Kim Ye (2013).

 

AZ: You don’t seem to talk very much about how much you have moved around in your life. Is it something that comes easily to you? How has it affected your view on the world and your art practice?

KY: Coming to the US at 5 years old, growing up was an exercise in imitation and transmission. As the only child of a single working-class mother, the circumstances of my immigration created a home life that was anything but idyllic in the picture of the “American Dream.” I found myself acting as liaison to the American culture that surrounded our small family – bringing its expression into our domestic space and mother-daughter relationship. It was my job to explain what Halloween looked like, advocate for the iconic Christmas tree, and instigate the “sex talk” with a mother who grew up in communist China where such conversations simply did not take place.

 

“A Man around the House [Confetti]” Kim Ye (2014).

KY: I developed a keen sense of observation – a knack for describing surfaces and appearances of customs, fashion, social roles, and relationships – even as I was alien to its genesis. This act of simultaneously performing “the traditional” while decoupling its expression from its origins, is what centers my artistic practice to this day.  My subject matter often deals with the imagery or practice of subcultures, groups of people who simultaneously segregate from a larger group in order to assimilate into a smaller, self-defined community. This concept of embodying and mitigating the tension between worlds – old/new, past/present, physical/psychic – and establishing new traditions from orthodoxy, all stem from the circumstances of my own immigration from the capital of China to the heartland of America.

 

AZ: Knowing that you are also a professional dominatrix, do you have any friendly advice for somebody interested in the realm of BDSM?

KY: I always encourage everyone to realize their fantasies IRL. In bringing the fantasy from inside one’s head out into the world, the relationship to the fantasy can be allowed to develop and evolve. I recently did a project called Shared Value, where I offered artists the opportunity to trade a piece of their work in exchange for a fantasy fulfillment experience. Artists interested in exploring this territory (or other territories) can feel free to get in touch if they’d like to participate in this ongoing project…

 

 

“Athleisure [lumpy]” Kim Ye (2015).

 

Kim Ye (b. 1984, Beijing, China) is a Los Angeles-based, multidisciplinary artist whose work incorporates performance, sculpture, video, installation, and painting. She received her MFA from UCLA (2012), and BA in studio art from Pomona College (2007). Inspired by everyday events, her work explores concepts of intimacy, exchange, and the power dynamics between artist and audience. She has exhibited and performed at the Hammer Museum, Material Art Fair, Getty Center, Moran Bondaroff, Alter Space, Pomona College Museum of Art,and Visitor Welcome Center, among others. [Bio taken from Kim Ye’s website].