Yaya Chou

 

Born and raised in Taiwan, Yaya Chou moved to California in 1997 to attend Cal Arts. After receiving her MFA in Experimental Animation, the award-winning director turned her interests to sculptures. In the following years, she expanded her media to paintings, textile art and site-specific installations. Her ways of making art remained greatly influenced by the training of filmmaking: a process of reasoning the thoughts from fragmented ideas into a consistent structure of images.
Yaya Chou is currently known for her gummi bear "Chandelier," a luminous, functional chandelier made of real chewy snacks and beads threaded on monofilament. The piece evolved from a concept of food safety to the issues of class and consumerism, and has further developed into a series of gummi bear sculptures. Other new works are animal paintings juxtaposed with found objects which represent domestic lives.
Yaya Chou lives and works in Los Angeles; She has shown her works in Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis and Taiwan.

 

 

on display January 4 - 25, 2007

 

 

 

Untitled

ink on found cotton

5" x 8"

$130 framed

 

 

 

Untitled

ink on found cotton

5" x 8"

$130 framed

 

 

 

Random I

acrylic, embroidery, and thread on canvas

6" x 6"

$86

 

 

 

Random I I

acrylic, embroidery, and thread on canvas

6" x 6"

$86

 

 

 

threat

Acrylic paint and appliqué on canvas

$95

 

 

 

puzzled

Acrylic paint and appliqué on canvas

$95

 

 

 

nurture

Acrylic paint and appliqué on canvas

$95

 

 

 

loss

Acrylic paint and appliqué on canvas

$95

 

 

 

judgement

Acrylic paint and appliqué on canvas

$95

 

 

 

fear

Acrylic paint and appliqué on canvas

$95

 

 

past works by Yaya shown at Altered Esthetics include:

 

 

 

exhumation

bronze

l'art de mort - October 2004

 

 

Cle-o-e-o

giclee print on water color paper

Animal Art - May 2005

 

 

To tell a story is to reinforce one’s ideology.

From making films to creating art, this principle plays an important role in my works.
Through the training in filmmaking, I cultivated passion to invent and rearrange symbols to tell stories. I was inspired by the textures of fabric and cutout images of common household goods under the camera; this experience later led me to explore the possibility of working in sculptures and installation.


I observe the distinctness of people’s cognitive thinking and the similarity of human experience in different cultures. I am interested in utilizing familiar objects or images to depict the dichotomy found inside highly developed societies. Elements from nature, animal and plant images often appear in my work, because they create an invisible tension or distance from our modern lifestyles.


Over the years, I have applied craft materials and found objects on paintings, also created sculptures with food or fabrics. The variety of materials I work with is essential because they represent particular meanings based on each individual viewer’s background. My focus is on the related experience created by the audience when they encounter my work, instead of the definition of the concept itself.