YUKANG Tao

Annihilation

Annihilation features new moving image artworks by Artist-in-Residence Yukang Tao. The exhibition includes 3D animations with sound exploring themes of brutality, animality, and posthumanism. Combining sensual pastel tableaus with ethereal soundscapes, Yukang’s work depicts a speculative landscape born from entanglements of capitalism, consumption, and corporeality.

“…Edibility, emerging from the carnal seduction of animal flesh, is disguised as the aestheticization and ethical consumption of corpses…” — Yukang Tao

Yukang Tao is an interdisciplinary artist who works in the fields of electronic arts, animation, video, and performance. Yukang’s works have been shown internationally at such venues as SIGGRAPH 2024, ISEA 2024, 18th Arte Laguna Prize Shortlist and Winner (Italy); II Edition 99 Future Blue-Chip Artists by Artsted; 3rd SETA Festival Mitologie Digitali at Saletta Campolmi (Italy) and Taizhou Contemporary Art Museum, The Holy Art Gallery, PH21 Photograph Gallery, LossenArt Gallery, CICA Museum, RuptureXIBIT Gallery, and Kunstarkaden Gallery.

Annihilation (Stunning), 2024, 3D animation

Annihilation (Bleeding), 2024, 3D animation

Annihilation (Evisceration), 2024, 3D animation

Artist’s Statement

Edibility, emerging from the carnal seduction of animal flesh, is disguised as the aestheticization and ethical consumption of corpses. This notion ubiquitously transcends brutal slaughter and exploitation of animality, yet it remains inherently advocates and architects of this capitalistic hierarchy. How can we, as semi-posthuman beings, dismantle and reconfigure the normalized subjectivity of slaughter? My work explores themes of brutality, animality, and posthumanism through various mediums to reveal unsettling intersections of capitalism, consumption, and corporeality.

— Yukang Tao, 2024 Artist-in-Residence

Learn more about the Residency