CCA Wattis Institute’s 2023–2024 research season is inspired by the work of artist Anicka Yi
The yearlong research season, Anicka Yi is on our mind, begins in September with an exciting lineup of free events, lectures, screenings, and programming with Anicka Yi’s visionary work as the centerpiece
San Francisco, CA—Tuesday, September 26, 2023—Artist Anicka Yi is the subject of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts’ 2023–2024 research season, Anicka Yi is on our mind.
Through the season, which runs from September 2023 through July 2024, a robust series of programs, lectures, and special events will be centered on the question that drives the institution’s core mission: What and how can we learn from artists today?
Each year, the Wattis hosts a research season that explores the contemporary moment through the lens of one artist’s work. Instead of an exhibition, this series creates a collective conversation around a broad set of themes and subjects relating to the work of a single artist.
This year, the work of artist Anicka Yi serves as a lens to think about our contemporary moment. A series of open questions map out a broad thematic territory for a year-long schedule of public programs: reading groups, lectures, performances, screenings, and other events explore artists and ideas that emerge as related or as relevant in productive ways.
Born in Seoul, South Korea, raised in the U.S., and currently based in New York City, Yi is a highly acclaimed contemporary artist known for her groundbreaking installations, sculptures, and immersive experiences that challenge traditional notions of art. Yi’s art is rooted in her fascination with ephemeral and intangible elements. She employs unconventional mediums like bacteria, scents, and various organic materials that question the monumentality of art. Yi’s work blurs the boundaries between the natural and the artificial, inviting viewers to contemplate the relationship between humanity, artificial intelligence and the natural world.
“An artist must trust that fleeting hints from the surrounding world will spark radical leaps of intuition. I have said before that the artist’s role is to protect uncertainty and there is so much left uncovered in my work, unknown even to me. I am excited to see where Wattis researchers' own leaps of intuition will lead.”
Installation view of Anicka Yi: In Love With The World, Hyundai Commission, Tate Modern, London, 2021.
Yi’s work grapples with themes relevant to our present moment such as: ramifications of a global pandemic, pending climate emergency, doom-and-gloom cycle of the news, artificial intelligence, and the coexistence between humans and machines. From that perspective, the Wattis will ask questions through research, events, and published writing, including: Is collaboration anti-capitalist? Is feminism contagious? Is there a consciousness without a body? How can we build social trust? Do non-humans have agency? What would it feel like to share the world with machines that could live in the wild and evolve on their own? How is the impermanence of life reflected in art? Can art be a form of inoculation?
Programs and Events
All upcoming events are free and open to the public. Many of the Wattis Institute’s lectures, screenings, and talks will be available to view in the Wattis Library shortly after each event.
A Lecture by Lumi Tan on Anicka Yi
Wednesday, September 27 | 6 pm
Location: 360 Kansas Street (between 16th and 17th streets), San Francisco
Admission: Free
Kicking off the year-long research season is a lecture on Anicka Yi by Lumi Tan on September 27 that focuses on how Yi's evocative use of language affords a better understanding of temporalities, materials, and ecological systems and how she pursues language as a mutable tool to build empathy between practitioners in different disciplines. By emphasizing a pursuit of the communicative abilities of non-verbal language within her work, Yi’s collaborative linguistic vocabulary does not seek to define terms but continually pries them open.
Conversation: Anicka Yi and Cathy Park Hong
Thursday, October 26 | 6pm
Location: 360 Kansas Street (between 16th and 17th streets), San Francisco
Admission: Free
On October 26, Anicka Yi herself engages in an informal conversation with writer and friend, Cathy Park Hong, to chat about topics present in both their work. Migration serves as an overall rubric for the evening, inspiring tentacular thinking around time, immigrant backgrounds, and the human question. Anicka will touch briefly on her current project around the Great Kelp Migration, and Cathy will talk about her current book project. They will also reflect on recent impactful trips to South Korea.
Film Screening: Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia
Thursday, November 9 | 6 pm Doors | 6:30 pm Screening
Location: 360 Kansas Street (between 16th and 17th streets), San Francisco
Admission: Free
On November 9, the Wattis will host the film screening CDOSEA (Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia) where artist Ho Tzu Nyen proposes 26 terms (one per each letter of the Latin alphabet) that ask the question: what constitutes the unity of Southeast Asia? Each term is a concept, a motif, or a biography, that reflects on a region that is not defined by a singular language, religion, or political power. CDOSEA is a multi-format work of infinite duration that draws from a database composed of videos, texts, music, and online images.
Installation view of Anicka Yi's Biologizing the Machine (tentacular trouble) at the 58th Biennale di Venezia, "May You Live In Interesting Times," Venice, 2019.
Anicka Yi is on our mind is curated by Jeanne Gerrity and Diego Villalobos, with assistance from Paulina Félix Cunillé. Read more about the Wattis’s 2023–2024 research season.