YUYU, so great to finally chat with you, I am such a fan of your work. To begin, can you introduce yourself to our community? Your name, where you are from and the mediums you work in?

I am finally here! hehe, thanx for the invitation Dave! Hello everyone! I am a YuYu, a Berlin-based photographer of Taiwanese origin. I work primarily with self-portraits and an appropriative method of digital collage to inject contemporary messages into classical pieces of European Art.

You have such a unique style and approach to your craft. I'm wondering when you first felt that creative spark within you, and what sort of influences inspired you along the way?

I think some level of creativity was always inherent in me. Yet it was much later that I got to explore it more in-depth. I did study architecture and was very passionate about its creative aspects but pursuing a career in it seemed to lack the thrill. This realisation coincided with my relocation to Berlin. The whole experience exposed me to a new world filled with creatives exploring their newly found freedom to be themselves.

My inspiration is extremely vast. There is of course the obvious admiration for classical masterpieces. I find something truly mesmerizing in the ways they used light and distortion to achieve the most visually pleasant outcomes. I like to think of them as the first generation of photography. On top of that comes my absolute adoration of pop culture. Take it from artists like David Lachapelle or even music Icons such as Lady GaGa, pop culture manages to infiltrate and unite communities.

Despite the visual aspects, my thematic inspiration is a passionate exploration of unveiling the marginalised narratives of queer and othered bodies in traditional art history. By crafting parallel histories, I aim to disrupt norms and celebrate the beauty of diversity.

What a thoughtful and thorough description, I feel like I know so much more about your intent with just a few paragraphs. Thank you for the beautiful writing there!

From ideation to conception- what does your process look like? How do you begin your path to create a peice, what tools do you use along the way, and when you feel it is "finished" what happens next?

So this is a fun one. The ideation and conception often happen in parallel. I have a large archive of works I use for inspiration but most of the time everything begins from the story, an experience I need to somehow visualise and explore. Now this part is also the hardest as it often takes a long time to narrow down the exact narrative that will eventually become an artwork.

Once my story and conceptual correlation to a classic masterpiece are done, I enter what I like to call the ‘practical phase’. Here comes the elaborate study of the human forms and the lights needed to achieve a perfect photographic imitation of the original painting. The main tools I use are my camera and studio, while the vast majority of the work is being built on Photoshop.

I think the most interesting aspect of my entire process is the post-production. Those who have studied classic paintings know their perspectives are often manipulated to achieve the perfect imagery. To fully recreate these strategic alterations one needs to enter a Frankenstein phase where hundreds of body parts are being meticulously intertwined to create a beautiful and highly unnatural body (lol).

What happens after I feel is ‘finished’ is always a question. They for sure need to ‘sit’ for at least a week before anyone sees them. I am an extremely detailed-oriented individual and I take my time for quality control. ;)

That attention to detail is abundantly clear- one could get lost in the intricacies of your work.

What’s your relationship with “being online” so to speak? It’s often a gift, often a curse. I’d love to hear about how social media has impacted your life- and how blockchain layers have influenced your experience as artist as well.

My relationship with being online would be best described as an endless battle to find balance. If you need to visualise it take a look at my 2023 work ‘Me Against Yu’ *insert laughing emoji*

n all seriousness, as a millennial, I belong to the last generation that lived in a world without digital identities. I do have memories of the sound of the internet when everything was happening through wires and blocked landlines *insert old emoji*. That means I have experienced the vast transition phases of social media, from the birth of ‘influencers’ to the demise of limited online content etc. Social Media have played such a vast role in our professional and personal development it’s hard to measure accurately. What I can say with certainty is that social media offered safe outlets for individuals living on the margins of society. Whether in a search to find others like you, or in an attempt to level yourself against others, more privileged than you, Social Media connected us in ways we could not imagine back in the early 00s. For that reason only, I see them as a precious gift that we need to protect.

Now enter blockchain: Digital ownership, permanence, authentication, provenance! (I am skipping all the ethical and economic aspects of it as I’ll end up speaking for 2+ hours. Let’s focus on the creative aspects of it). What a game-changer for the industry! I recall that time when Instagram transitioned from being a personal photo blog to becoming your brand’s ambassador.

The moment we all came to the realisation that we need to produce content more than art, to feed the algorithms so they result in job opportunities and sales. It was a nightmare, and one of the things I absolutely hate in today’s social media models. Blockchain gave us back the ownership of our works and re-ignited the purest passion of all —the one of creating and expressing our deepest feelings for the world to see. Since my involvement with on-chain art, I experienced immense growth artistically, I have never felt more aligned with my vision and creative expression.

Couldn’t have said it better myself - and one thing to add- blockchain gives us artists a root layer, one we can firmly and immutably tie our artistic legacy to- which in turn, frees up our social media to be more playful and more honest.

A creative life is a winding one, there’s no one path, no right way to do things. It can be risky, and often society pushes against those who seek to live into a creative career. How did you navigate these counterflows and what advice might you have to someone who wants to commit to that lifestyle?

As I have shared plenty in the past, I too come from a fairly conservative, developing society. Growing up in Taiwan the perception of a creative career of any sort was equal to professional suicide. One of the reasons I have a master’s degree in Architecture derives directly from that. I chose a fairly creative academic field but with a corporate safety net to back it. Of course, looking back now, I don’t regret this direction. Studying architecture introduced me to art history and socio-political movements of the past centuries. It taught me discipline, conceptualisation, and the digital tools I needed to achieve them. In many ways, Architecture is the solid foundation upon which I built my creative practice.

As I have shared plenty in the past, I too come from a fairly conservative, developing society. Growing up in Taiwan the perception of a creative career of any sort was equal to professional suicide. One of the reasons I have a master’s degree in Architecture derives directly from that. I chose a fairly creative academic field but with a corporate safety net to back it. Of course, looking back now, I don’t regret this direction. Studying architecture introduced me to art history and socio-political movements of the past centuries. It taught me discipline, conceptualisation, and the digital tools I needed to achieve them. In many ways, Architecture is the solid foundation upon which I built my creative practice.