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Yi’s various means of display are frames. The frames, generally a referent in themselves, come preloaded with the expectation of what should be contained. Dryer portholes, aquariums with grow-color lights, positive-pressure bubbles, cooking pots, the Prada hallway, each is a self-contained system of expectations for the sculpture. That these expectations are met with bodily concoctions that actively undermine the expectation is their surrealism. Like the surrealist classic, lobster telephones, supplanting bio-waste mystery for what should be held as the “clean” idea. Spooky bodily excrement in the pure objects of culture.
See too: Anicka Yi at Cleveland Museum of Art