Exhibition on view:
February 15th – March 14th, 2025

Location:
The Blanc Gallery
15 E 40th Street
New York, NY

Imagine stepping into a space where identities shift like rippling water, where the boundaries between the self and the other blur into a seamless flow of digital and physical realities. This is the world of Becoming Other, the first North American solo exhibition by multimedia artist Yiou Wang, currently on view at THE BLANC in New York.

Yiou’s exhibition combines motion capture, animation, immersive installations, and mixed realities to create a richly detailed and imaginative world.

Yiou Wang’s background in architecture is evident in the way she constructs elaborate ecosystems rather than singular works. She builds entire worlds that evolve over time, each with its own mythology, invented language, and interactive possibilities.

Drawing inspiration from speculative fiction, ancient mythology, and emergent technologies, Yiou creates immersive landscapes that challenge our perception of reality. Her work resists categorization, existing at the intersection of art, technology, and ecological thinking.

Becoming Other unfolds across multiple dimensions, with each section of the exhibition offering a different entry point into Yiou’s ongoing world-building projects. Visitors are first greeted by eight digital prints and six simultaneously played animations derived from Soul-Assemblages, Streamborn, and Liquid Paintings.

These works are captivating: broken figures fade into skeletal forms, glowing landscapes breathe with organic textures, and soft colors shift like light through mist. The images blend the mechanical and the natural, creating a dreamlike world where digital and organic elements merge.

In the immersive space, Yiou’s holographic creatures from Mixanthropy: Animorphosis (2025) in collaboration with Meichun Cai come alive, shifting and changing as viewers move. These beings are neither fully human nor animal, existing in a liminal state that questions fixed identities. Yiou explores “becoming” as a continuous, fluid process rather than a single transformation. With performance capture and voice acting from various collaborators, these ghostly figures feel almost eerily real.

A recurring theme in Yiou’s work is the reimagining of myths through contemporary digital tools. Her practice is rooted in what she calls “ancient future myths” — narratives that draw from historical mythologies but are transformed through emergent technologies like real-time animation and virtual reality.

In Co-Life/Co-Demise Chapters 1-3 (2024), in collaboration with Hsiao-Chu Hsia, another standout installation, visitors traverse surreal landscapes filled with molten minerals, cosmic formations, and biomorphic abstractions. These shifting environments feel both otherworldly and eerily familiar, reflecting the ever-changing relationship between nature and digital space.

Yiou’s approach challenges Western binaries of self versus other, human versus nonhuman. Instead of positioning hybridity as something to be feared, as is often the case in Hollywood’s depictions of hybrid creatures, she embraces it as divine, fluid, and integral to existence. In mythology, shapeshifters are often figures of wisdom and transformation; in Becoming Other, they serve as metaphors for a world where identities are no longer static but constantly evolving.

Becoming Other is an invitation to reconsider how we perceive difference. Yiou asks us: What if we saw the Other not as something foreign or threatening, but as an extension of ourselves? What if transformation wasn’t a rupture, but a natural state of being? In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, virtual realities, and shifting ecological landscapes, these questions feel more urgent than ever.

Through her work, Yiou proposes a new way of seeing — one that embraces fluidity, multiplicity, and interconnectedness. Becoming Other is an exhibition that prompts its visitors to rethink their place in a world where boundaries are constantly in flux.

See Becoming Other at THE BLANC in New York City until March 14, 2025 and let us know your thoughts!

About Yiou Wang

Yiou Wang is a multimedia artist known for her experimental approach to world-building and immersive digital storytelling. With a background in architecture and an interest in speculative fiction, her work spans animation, performance, and installation. She has exhibited internationally, and her projects often blur the lines between myth, technology, and ecological consciousness. Becoming Other marks a significant moment in her career, offering a glimpse into her ever-evolving artistic universe.