SoMad is proud to present The Anonymous Town by Yi Hsuan Lai curated by Jordan Segel at the Spring/Break Art Show 2020.

The Anonymous Town is a series of staged photography, which incorporates the artist’s self-portrait, biomorphic shape sculptures, and artificial materials to reflect the contradictory relationship between the urban environment and human nature. The artist uses her body as a receiver and her sculptures as extensions of her senses, exploring psychological emotions felt by people living in the industrial world. She also evokes her personal experience of anxiety and insecurity felt as a foreigner living in New

York city. Lai’s scenes are sophisticated constructions built from disposed-of objects and common artificial materials generated by wasteful environments which she transforms into playful, uncanny scenarios. The characters and hand-made sculptures in the images are her symbolic avatar, traveling in the interior and exterior world in pictorial space. Assembling different materialities from two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects, Lai creates an ambiguous and illusionary experience for the viewer.