For most of us, our life is like the various stages of soybean.

Like soybean, we have been experiencing the process of soaking, grinding, rubbing, pressing, heating, boiling, drying… transforming in various different stages, from fresh green soybean, dry soybean, tofu skin, bean curd, soybean oil, and to fermented processes like fermented black bean, soy sauce, natto, miso, and sticky tofu…

Written by Ying Ye

In Burn the Midnight Oil, artist Ying Ye tackles the topics of labor and the lives of Chinese immigrants literally and metaphorically through soybeans: soybeans as inexpensive, nourishing food, as the tie that binds Chinese families together, and as part of what confines her own family to ongoing labor-filled lives. In Day-to-Day Life Inside the Tofu Press the repeated actions involved in preparing food in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant—the artist’s parents’—are seen in video loops, further reiterating the toil they depict while embedded in the surface of a simulated tofu press, itself connoting oppression. The pressures of work and the traumas of alienation, much less racism, are felt by children as well as parents. In neon we read “What do you want?” Who is “you”? The waitress asks; the customers answer. Immigrant parents ask, wanting things for their children. Children ask, wanting things for their parents. What comes from assimilation, leaving “familiar” traditions to fulfill individual desires? What is needed to survive in the capitalist world? The family is primary. Everyone works in the restaurant.

In We Need Each Other to Stay Alive empty yellow forms, made of fragile tofu skin, emulate the “yellow” skin of Asians as they hang from meat hooks between soy sauce buckets above the door to the show’s entrance. As coverings for human heads, their hollowness urges a mental reset for the viewer entering the immigrant experience. Like tofu skin, human bodies and psyches are fragile. Pressure takes its toll in illnesses and depression. Healing is essential. It comes in the forms of dry soybeans in muslin bags, provided for moments of deep breathing and empathy for the body and in the enjoyment of soft jellied bean curd and spices served from the Healing Tofucycle by the artist who inquires about your health and mentally scoops some of her own physical and psychological strengths into your dish. You pay her by writing a check (one she designed) to end your tour at the Want and Resource Soybean Cutting Board Counter. The artist reflects on the connection she has made with you, on human interdependence, on creating another family with you through her labor.

Written by Sherry Buckberough

Exhibition:

Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT

Recipient of 2022 Real Art Award

Real Art Award Solo Show

July 20, 2023 - Oct 10, 2023

Photo by Zack Carroll & John Groo

Film by Zack Carroll

Slow Burn is a multileveled meditative space in which artist Ying Ye’s installation projects are thematically fused by the ubiquitous presence of soybeans and the promise of healing. As a fundamental form of nourishment and as a metaphor for human connection, she proposes that soybeans are at the root of traditional Chinese values. They are also a prime ingredient in the kitchen of the restaurant owned by the artist’s family.

In Sorry We are Closed, placed at the entrance of the school’s closed cafeteria, hollow hood-like objects made of fragile tofu skin shaped to fit over both male and female mannequin heads hang in a line from meat hooks like roast ducks in a Chinese butcher’s window. There they wait to be healed and occupied by healthy souls. Pierced with acupuncture needles, smudged with the remains of moxa (mug wort) burns, and slowly baked, they shed soy oil into containers below—a demonstration of the soy cycle as it parallels human pain and human healing.

Inside the gallery in Torment the Other. Born from the Same Root these “tofu-heads” hang from a metal chain in pairs, connoting sisterhood and brotherhood, descending into a wok where beans appear to fry in soy oil taken directly from the family’s restaurant. The simulated fire beneath the wok is fueled by dried soybean plants, one part of the plant destroying the other. The piece refers to an ancient poem about two princes who fight one another to inherit their father’s kingdom. It ends with the phrase “Both grew out of the same root, why's one so anxious to torment the other?” Soy sauce buckets surround the cooking scene, inviting viewers to sit and observe the slow burn.

In Fortune to Be the Family two live soybean plants, raised by the artist’s mother, grow beneath purple/pink UV bulbs that serve as lighting for the entire room. On their stalks one sees soybean pods emerge, again in pairs, from roots buried in an intricate ceramic planter constructed of fused replicas of Chinese fortune cookies, another reference to the tight human bonds necessary for survival. At the bottom, hidden from our eyes, the cookies form the shape of a lotus, connoting purity, fertility, and prosperity. The whole sits on a circle of ash from beanstalk burn and wok fry (imported again from the family restaurant).

Between these works is Get Stab and Get Heal, a less than inviting title for a quite inviting floor piece in which acupuncture mats are attached to soy stuffed “mattresses” on which viewers may lay and enjoy a healing session. Small acupuncture needles are embedded in the petals of each of the lotus shaped forms that compose the mats. One can repose there quietly, smelling the aroma and listening to the sound of the burning soybean plants in the piece nearby.

Finally, Memorize the Forgotten Pain is a reminder that healing should not result in oblivion. The fragile barrier separating a human being from the world, its skin, is easily broken or torn, leaving hollow scars as memories and warnings that the same pain could again be inflicted from the same sources. One must not forget. Ye opts to quote Bell Hooks From All about Love: “ Mindful remembering lets us put the broken bits and pieces of our hearts together again. This is the way healing begins.” To treasure memory as the audiences experience this monument work, they are invited to take some soybeans from this offering space.

Written by Sherry Buckberough

Exhibition:

Middlesex Community College

Pegasus Gallery Solo Show

Sep 27 - Oct 31, 2023

Photos by Zack Carroll & Reynaldo Cruz Diaz

Videos film and edit by Zack Carroll

Empathy Fortune Bags( Engaged Wearable Sculptures): 50lbs Salt, Cotton Canvas, Blue Dye, Turned Ash Wood, 2021-2022. Supported by Yale-China Association’s Brilliant Boba Project.

You Can Engage the Empathy Fortune Bags with Your Family and Friends. Handle with Care and Support!

From Top to Bottom on Empathy Fortune Bags on the Wall:

Text on the front: Capital Restaurant

Text on the back: Filial Piety and Independence

Text on the front: Collective Work

Text on the back: Emotional Bonds

Text on the front: Migrants, People of Color, and Women

Text on the back: Violence, Racism, and Sexism

Served with the Experiences of Hardship, Suffering, Burden, Care, and Support.

“How May I Help You?” takes place at Ye’s family Chinese American restaurant and her studio where she asks her parents, siblings, and friends to wear interactive wearable sculptures, Empathy Fortune Bags, on their shoulders and bodies.

Empathy Fortune Bags are engageable wearable soft sculptures, made of cotton canvas and contain 50lb salt, and they are designed to look like long waved fortune sacks with the text on top. The empathy fortune bags can wear on people's shoulders and bodies to make them empathize, support, and distribute the weight from others. They imply the physical and mental weight, family trauma, suffering, and burden that people carry on everyday life experiences.

“How May I Help You?” represents her family and social dynamic, her cultural influences and belief, restaurant system and structure, and systemic racism in the restaurant environment. She physically supports, empathizes, and distributes the weight of life stress and duty away from her parents. This artwork addresses the international trauma and burden that younger generational Asian and Asian Americans have been experiencing in the American culture, and it embodies a sense of sharing the weight of the world together.

Audiences can engage with the wearable sculpture with their family and friends to feel and empathize with the sense of hardship, burden, and support.

About the Yale-China Association’s Brilliant Boba Project

Brilliant Boba is a unique resource for educators to center Asian-American voices in their classrooms through art and narrative. It gives students and educators new ways to reflect on how we can build community and empathy through experiencing others’ perspectives. This bite-sized resource kit was designed by educators and artists for educators to easily integrate Asian-American voices, social-emotional learning, and art into learning spaces to facilitate empathy and creative thinking. These activities are meant to spark thinking, creativity, and learning in a short amount of time. Rather than immediate change, this resource kit acts as seeds for learning and empathy. Educators can choose their own story or artwork or use a ready-made plan. Our kit gives both learner and educator agency to choose how they engage with Brilliant Boba.

Find the Educational Resources

Ye’s designed in-class material resources at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11f8QhnWILfGwFH80Gf9obhGvsKSdhU0A?usp=sharing

More artists and educators designed in-class material resources, and collective stories for Asain and Asain Americans’ experiences can be found at www.yalechina.org/brilliant-boba

Exhibited at

Yale-China Association’s Brilliant BoBa Project, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT,

Time: January 2022

All Road, Five Point Annex, Torrington, CT.

Time: October 2021

Intervene In the Elevator by Moving A Couch Inside, Video, Site-specific Installation Performance: Real Art Ways Building’s Elevator in Hartford, Couch, Table, and Bouquet, Performers: Nick Haggerty and Ying Ye, 2021.

Full Video: https://youtu.be/31GGJ21YQPY

In the socially engaged art project, Intervene in the Elevator by Moving a Couch Inside, Ye moves a couch, a small table, and a bouquet into the elevator, and she invites Nick to her homelike installation to have a two-hour long semi-private conversation on the couch with her about their life change experiences around their departures, what hometown and homeland mean to each other, and their situation under the COVID condition between the different countries, Taiwan, mainland China, and the USA. They meet, greet, or have a short conversation with people who come in and out to this building while people come in to take the elevator.

Ye's homelike social sitting intervenes in the structure and function of the elevator. It also examines the attention on social interaction between males and females and strangers in the public and private spaces. With this out of normal homelike sitting in a semi-enclosed elevator space, where people are not normally gathering and socializing, creates senses of safeness and comfort to people in the urban environment, along with a sense of awkwardness to disturb the human interactions, social systems, and the function of public facilities.

Restaurant System, IG Stickers, Moving Images, 2021.

Restaurant System depicts how the restaurant's internal stakeholders like employees, managers, and owners, and external stakeholders like suppliers, society, the government, creditors, shareholders, and customers intertwine social relationships, and how they influence each other or cause a system failure in different sections of the restaurant.

Carry Your Childhood with You, Audio Hosted on Ever Widening Circles, Collaboration with Ash Kilmartin, Organized by Nato Thompson through the Alternative Art School, 2021.

Audio Link: https://www.mixcloud.com/EverWideningCircles/ever-widening-circles-25-carrying-your-childhood with-you-with-ying-ye-27072021/

Ying Ye’s Family Photos from the 1990s and 2018s in Her Hometown, XiaDe Village, Fuzhou, China in Responded with the Audio, Carry Your Home with You.

How do you send someone else back in time, to another moment in your own history? Over video calls, we recalled the sounds, flavors, and routines of our far-away former homes. We invited each other to try out one another's chosen media for the first time. Ash learned to throw clay pots, to make shapes that would communicate the feel of the feijoa, a favorite local fruit from her childhood home in New Zealand. Ying recorded descriptions to make a sound work about her childhood experience in her grandparent’s fruit orchards and city development in her village in China. We agreed to make these works as gifts for each other and to let it be the beginning of a process, rather than an end product.

One Channel Video and Sound installation, Two Minutes Slow Motion Video in Loop, Terracotta, Clay on Canvas and Mixed Medium, Light filter, Media Player, and Electoral Cores, 2018 - 2020.

In Speak from the Ground, it illustrates Ye’s feeling about the Chinese government-mandated demolition and relocation of her village.

In the video and sound installation, Speak from the Ground, a large fermentation pot with a hole on the lid is inside of the enclosed terracotta fabric walls. The pot houses a small video screen of Ye’s mouth forming bubbles underwater in slow motion (mimicking the fermentation process) is meant to preserve tradition, culture, and identity within the walls that are cracking and falling down around it.

Dan Deutsch’s Interview Writing on Ye’s exhibition on Farmington Valley Art Center at the Greater Hartford Art Council Here

Watch Immersive Video Document inside the Installation Here

Two Person Show

March 2020

“ Relics / Remants”, Trae Brook and Ying Ye, Farmington Valley Arts Center Artist in Residence 2020, Farmington Valley Arts Center, Avon, CT.

A Interactive Installation Goes Along with “Speak from the Ground”, Pickles, Fermentation Pot Collaboration with Erika Novak and Drew Darley, Table, Mats, Broad-leaved Epiphyllum, Dry Flowers, Lamp, Curtain, Painting Based on the Ye Family Photograph, Bowls from Ye’s home, Chopsticks, Tea Sets, Serving Wares, 2020.

In this home installation, Eating Pickles Together in the Reproduction of the Home, it captures the senses of the fermented food through physical taste and smell in order to induct participants’ emotion, representing the ideal home through family eating meals together in the home setting.

Two Person Show

“ Relics / Remants”, Trae Brook and Ying Ye, Farmington Valley Arts Center Artist in Residence 2020, Farmington Valley Arts Center, Avon, CT.

Time: March, 2020

Photo and Video by Chris Herrera

Widow Installation, Brown Clay, Red Pepper, Curry, Black Pepper, Rice flour, Isomalt, Wood power, and Porcelain, 2020.

Spouts, this project explores the colors and smells of the seasonings, food substances, and the nonfunctional ceramic ware installing on the windows in order to speak to the colors of the solid and race, and food culture, using the smell of the seasonings to resonate people’s personal memory about food and home.

Two Person Show

“ Relics / Remants”, Trae Brook and Ying Ye, Farmington Valley Arts Center Artist in Residence 2020, Farmington Valley Arts Center, Avon, CT.

Time: March, 2020

Site-Specific Art: Hartford Art School Main Entrance, Neon Light, Collaborated with Neon Artist Heather Abiera, 34 x 34 Inches, 2019.

In Infinite Demolishment, the Chinese demolishment symbol(拆), paints on the houses, which mandates all the houses in the designated area in China will be torn down by the Chinese Government Relocation Policies. Ye recreates and combines the Chinese demolition symbol (拆) with the diamond shape of the Chinese happiness sign (福) to imply that the capitalist society and policies affect relocated people’s lives, wealth, happiness, and loss of the family history and memories.  

In this site-specific art, she installs Infinite Demolishment neon in the Hartford Art School main entrance to apply her institutional critique; moreover, the institute and the staffs have no idea what the Chinese symbol means. 

More importantly, this neon is an adaptable and portable public art installation. It can install in significant public and private spaces or buildings to raise questions, bring critiques, and respond to their social contexts based on the context and content of the places.

*The neon symbol is the modern form of the city's development and design. It is chemical gas and electrical. The signage industry has declined in the past several decades, and cities are now concerned with preserving and restoring their antique neon signs.

Vinyl, Wood Charcoal, and Air, 170 x 175 x 157 Inches, 2019.

In the installation, Burn Down, it depicts how Ye’s hometown burns down and disappears through the intentional fire accident by the local government on the excuse of lighting the firework for celebrating the Chinese New Year.

The large and long transparent inflatable vinyl sticks in various sizes, filling with the air and the remains of the burned wooden model of Ye’s house in China, lean against the walls and lie on top of each other on the floor to create a pile in the open space. In this temporary installation, Ye applies materials in vinyl, wood charcoal, and air to capture the ghost of the house beams, preserve the house structure, and state the temporary construction of the human body through its instability.

Three Minutes Performance Video, Site Specific: A House (Context: Ye’s House in China will be destroyed by Chinese Government’s Relocation Policy), Chinese Shoulder Pole, Chinese Feather Duster, Chinese Hacking Knife, Gloves, Rain Boots, Mop, and Old Women Farmer’s Outlet, 2018.

This performance video depicts the urbanization of China which mandates that all the houses in the countryside need to be torn down. In this site-specific performance video, a Chinese woman, who dresses like a traditional farmer, walks into the setting of a Chinese house and cleans the window glass and the ceiling of the main entrance hall with a dust wand and a mop. Meanwhile, on the opposite side, the same woman walks into the scene and destroys the window glass with a sickle and a bamboo shoulder pole. She simultaneously cleans and destroys the house and window glass through the video. 

Under the Chinese relocation policy, as farmers and house owners, they felt coerced into a situation, they want to protect their houses and their lands, but they have no choice and have no power to fight back.  Ye destroys her house instead of destroying it through other people’s hands. It is a way out to express depression and constraint. Using her body movement as a direct medium to express the feeling of how the relocation policy feels.

Folk customs and human interest of Chinese have been taking away by Chinese relocation policies and modernism. With all that reflection and refraction, modernism creates the illusion that there is an illusion when in fact it is a straightforward statement of money and power.

Chinese Demolition Sign (拆), Time Based Temporary Installation, Snow And Rain, 24 x 24 Inches, 2019.

In Chai on Snow, the Chinese Demolition Sign (拆) is a wooden design that is inspired by the Chinese demolition symbol (拆) and the shape of the Chinese Happiness symbol and laying on top of the snow. The rain falls on top of the snow and the wooden design; as a result, it leaves the imprint of the design on the snow. This work depicts the metaphor of the hometown as a place we can never be able to go back as immigrants, and home and hometown are temporarily frail existences in the world and this nature. 

Installation and Performance: Collaborated with Tong Ye (Ying Ye’s Sister), Fire Bricks, Gravel, Sand, Besom, Hoe, Liquid Rice Flour, Stainless Bowls, Ceramic Cup, Water, Chef Cooking Spoon, and Old farmer’s Outlet, 144 x 192 Inches, 2018.

In the installation performance, Moving Bricks, two women wear the clothing of their grandmother while they are continually and repeatedly sweeping, constructing, and deconstructing a floor plan and a cooking pit with bricks, gravel, and sand. This performance depicts the urbanization of China, which mandates that all the houses in the countryside be torn down.

Site Specific: Stanley Sculpture Center, University of Hartford, Acrylic on Canvas, Glass, Concrete Blocks,and Wood Sticks , 325 x 247 Inches, 2019.

War House is translated from the announcement banner of confiscation headquarter from demolishment project at Ye’s hometown. Ye combines the Chinese Spring Festival couplets with the political banner per government, to highlight the demolishment policy that always creates conflict between people and government, which is incompatible with the political messages of relocation.

Interacted Performance Installation: Isomalt, Marble Grinder, and Wood, 35x 60 x 53 Inches, 2019.

In Keys to Swallow, Ye performs and interacts momentarily with the audiences. She destroys the transparent sugar keys in the Marble Grinder on the ground, then she transports the fragmented sugar keys and marble grinder on the wooden shelf on the wall.  Audiences are directed to eat the fragmented sugar keys by her direction on the glass label. Swallowing the keys is a metaphor for the memories of home and healing pills, the harsh feeling of the lost home, and mental pains that have to be digested by the physical body.

One Minute Silent Video, Studio Light Switch, 2018-2019.

Translating is a shot of a studio light switch and someone’s hand switching the light switchers around, and each switcher has labeled Chinese and English on both sides.  This silent video is to express how a multilingual person’s brain looks visually and acts when he or she responds to a hybrid linguistic learning environment.

Multi-channel Video Installation, Eight Minutes Videos, Phone, Speakers, Projector, Pedestal, Metal Cell Phone Holder, 236 X 140 X 180 Inches, 2019.

Ye is a Chinese immigrant to the US; constantly, she is confused about the two languages of Chinese and English while she is speaking them separately between home and school. This video installation is to capture the sensation of unable speech, show dis-communication in our daily lives with other people, friends, and family members. Moreover, in the social content, words are frequently used without thought.

It is a multi-channel video installation project. One video of the welding the metal is projected on the wall; it displays and repeats several sections of a shot of welding a straight line between two pieces of metal. The welding video is glitching. In another video, a close-up, unfocused mouth, which stammers to speak words, displays on a cell phone on top of a high pedestal. This pedestal is about eight feet away to the welding video wall. Both videos are faced toward viewers. Two videos simultaneously stimulate the viewer’s visual and sensory perception, which cause vagueness to what they see and what they hear.

Installation and Performance: Stainless Table, boxes of Muster Sauces, Wood, Sauce Bottles, Chair, Mylar, Acrylic, Sign Light Box, Apron, and Chef Hat, 2018.

Being an immigrant requires constant reconciliation of my differing identities in exterior daily life and interior mental life. It puts me in a middle ground between where I came from and where I am now. The middle ground called “Green Card” is not even a ground. It is a platform floating in a dune of alienation between two countries. I experience profound alienation, as if I were a time traveler. It is a subtle and very awkward inner dilemma.

China Eagle—Hotdog Picture Moment Service is a participatory installation that portrays this awkwardness through my interaction with a customer-viewer. China Eagle is an installation that replicates a restaurant where I provide the service of taking “selfies” for customers. It includes two face-cutout picture boards that say “HOTDOG.” When customers arrive, I take their picture with their cellphones. Then, I wrap the cellphone with a silver hotdog wrapping paper at my working station and give it back to them. While I wrap the cellphone, I ask each customer their preference—either ketchup or mustard, or both. I pretend to pour these condiments on the cellphone before wrapping it up. The customer leaves with her selfie as a hotdog.

Most Chinese restaurants in America serve Chinese food that fits American customers’ taste. Ethnicity constitutes a low level of curiosity and novelty, not something of real, authentic difference. American customers in my restaurant receive the service of taking away a Hotdog selfie as a memorial picture taken by an authentic Chinese woman. The restaurant doesn’t serve any Chinese food. Rather it serves a performance my awkwardness as an immigrant. What the customer gets with the selfie she takes away is affirmation of American culture.

Live Proformance, 5 Boxes of Fortune Cookies.

“Fortune Cookies with Painting Inside”, Collaboration with Philip Thomas, Clay, Oil on Canvas, 2018.

Fortune Cookies with Painting Inside is the three ceramic fortune cookies lay on top of each other to create a triangle form, the three small painted paintings are separately inserted into the fortune cookies. The original context of historical paintings has been lost in the history and time and fragility and absence of the Chinese culture product of fortune cookies in American context.

“Infinite Fortune”, Bronze, Thank You Plate, 2018

Infinite Fortune, is three golden bronze casted Chinese fortune cookies display on the black tip tray plate with printed “Thank You” letters. As a Chinese immigrant and restaurant worker in America, bronze fortune cookies capture bonded relationship of family supporting system in the restaurants.

Eight Minutes Performance Video, Two Fortune Cookies Boxes, Bikes, 2017.

In this performance “Communications on Bikes,” where two people on exercise bikes speak Chinese with fortune cookie boxes on their heads, blocking their view. I portray the modern technologies that have been changed people’ s lifestyle on communication such as Cellphone and Internet. Also, I depict the history and lifestyle of Chinese immigrants, many of whom become restaurant workers. They keep going and moving like machines, and they go nowhere.

My video depicts immigration issues such as miscommunication, culture barrier through everyday objects and conversation with others in my life and in my Dad’s restaurant.

There are no English subtitles for audiences.

Handmade Maple Cutting Board, Costed Glass Ginger, Kitchen Stainless Table, Old Chinese Knife, 2016.

Site-Specific Installation, University of Hartford, Business School Entrance, Reeds, 2017

This public installation respond to the environmental issue of University of Hartford pond’s overflowed Reeds, and It installs at the entrance of the business school . Audiences walk through the installation and experience how overflowed Reed affects the habitants’ behavior and its ecosystem in the pond.

Interactive Installation, Maple, Porcelain, Wooden Bowels, Straw Mat, Cushions, Glass Bottle, and Flowers. 2018