#asianowparis

Rage in Technicolor

Her palette and figuration may at first mislead viewers into thinking they have stumbled upon a festive gathering of happy thoughts, cutesy musings, and innocent wonder. This impression quickly fades as the compositions reveal content ranging from the dark and troubling, to gloomy and depressing—nothing naïve nor cheerful about them. Gripping with details such as mutilated body parts, infliction of pain, suicide, or episodes of anxiety and distress, the works of Yeo Kaa actually deals with the darker side of life, just candy-coated with pastel and luminous shades, and told using doll-figured tableaux. While drawing mostly from personal narratives, the imagery of her art converses easily with common human experiences, thus expanding into broader reflections about humanity and society.

In this set of works, she alludes to the some bitter realities of contemporary life, particularly its extremely competitive nature and the drive of greed that creates exploitative relations and systems. We live in a world in which everything has a price tag, suggested in the paintings by a list where animal meat and humans go together on sale, and a head likewise packed and appraised. Milking cash out of the individual knows no limit: even in a lifeless state, a cadaver with torso ripped open generates money as someone poses a snapshot with it. From the poses, gestures, and expressions of other figures combined with recurring scribblings of texts, what emerges is a feeling of betrayal and exhaustion, a rant and protest that one has been sucked dry and has had enough. A call for escape seems to linger; a denouncement of a vicious cycle.

These pieces could remind us that the ugly side of a society ruled by the game of survival of the fittest is oftentimes made more covert and clandestine by an enticing, attractive façade, just like how the intense confrontation between a fed-up persona and the exploitative system depicted in the works is partly concealed by their colors and stylization. They may also imply the very ills of a consumer society in which the glossy and glittering promise of material goods, luxuries, wealth, and possession is what pushes individuals to turn cunning and exploit. But this appearance of a pleasant surface may also be a strength. Striking and eye-catching, it allows the voice that rejects the system to be more amplified.

Text by N.M. Marquez