Yushi Li

I think I have always been interested in gender politics, which are imbedded in the predominance of the visual in Western philosophy. And living in the current age of images, I’m curious about how technology and the Internet have affected the gendered power relationship in the field of vision.

I think there are biological differences between men and women, which we cannot ignore and have to acknowledge. But gender is something different from biological sex, which is constructed and affected by social and cultural factors. And nowadays, the idea of gender has become more fluid, shifting between genderless to pangender. However, gender norms are still prevalent in our society, especially in China, where I am from. Most people still behave and think according to society’s expectations of different gender identities.

I’m not sure why people laugh, to be honest. I feel like maybe it was because I described what I do in a very simplified and not serious way. But people do find me photographing naked men a bit surprising and funny every time I tell them. I guess firstly, nudity is still something provocative for most people when we talk about it, even though naked pictures are almost everywhere. Secondly, I think it is exactly because making naked pictures has always been something men have been doing; it takes time for people to get used to the opposite. Apart from that, I guess this kind of reaction also reveals that conventional gender norms are still deeply internalised in our minds.

I tried using Tinder for dating before I started this project. I was fascinated by how people exhibit themselves and communicate with each other on this kind of online platform, which is very instantaneous and weirdly intrusive. After talking with my male friends who also use Tinder, I also found out the different kinds of experiences we have between male and female users. While men swipe right to most profiles, women are more selective and less responsive. Then, I thought it could be interesting to use Tinder as my tool to find men for my photographs, on which I could act as an active predator in the similar way as how people search for casual sex online.
Most people just didn't reply to my messages. Some people thought it was a scam or something. And some people wanted me to strip for them or have sex with them to ‘pay them back’. In a way, I feel like these men who sent me sexual requests treated me as a sexual object who was trying to seduce them or would use her own body to exchange something she wants instead of a professional artist. And I did ask people who said ‘yes’ to my project. I think most of them said that they thought it was an interesting thing to do, or they were interested in art and curious about my project. One of the guys told me that he agreed to do it because he expected that something else might happen between us.

In Ancient Greece art and early Renaissance art, the male nude was actually the ideal and principal subject. However, unlike the female nude, which has normally functioned as male’s erotic pleasure, the male nude is viewed in a lot wider range of contexts. They are athletic and confident, presenting their bodies in an upright and aggressive way, while female figures are normally presented in slightly bent and passive poses. If I have to say why, I guess it is because that we used to (maybe still) live in a patriarchal society, in which men are generally represented as an active, working and powerful subject, rather than a pretty and sexual object.

I do hope my work appears kind of humorous and uncanny, but I didn’t really plan to make comic images at the beginning.

According to Jean-Paul Sartre, the other is objectified through my look upon him or her and could be apprehended as a subject only when he or she sees me. Being seen inevitably makes me conscious of my own vulnerable being that can be hurt by others and reduces me to the feeling of shame. The shame is the shame of an unknown image of myself that is seen and judged by the other. In this work, I try to question this dichotic active-passive power relationship between the looking subject and the looked-at object by putting myself in the picture, which is both the subject and the object.

I normally photograph men doing mundane activities in my photographs because I like the domestic and natural feeling of them. I think peeing is something very mundane but also erotic in a way. Apart from that, urinating is also a sign of masculinity, which is slightly aggressive and intrusive, like ejaculation. By photographing a man with his urine dripping down his penis, I feel like it’s my way to play with this power structure between my subject and myself.

First of all, it’s my personal preference. I prefer the quality of analogue photographs and the whole analogue process, which is much slower and more tactile than digital photography. And I like the contrast between analogue prints and online images, which shows the gap between the real and the virtual.

I guess so. The similar thing between photography and social network platforms is that you are always behind a machine (a camera/screen). In other words, there is something non-human in both cases, which creates distance between two sides of the camera/screen. But of course, the distance created by the screen is much bigger on the Internet, as things online are virtual, anonymous and instantaneous.

Yes, I think I will continue working with photography from a feminist perspective. And now, I am trying to make work that is more directly linked with the Internet.