Sheung Yiu

In his long-term project, Finland-based artist researcher Sheung Yiu (b. 1991, HKG) investigates how faces have been used across cultures and technologies over time to predict character traits and an individual’s future. Using his own face, Yiu portrays how similar patterns of thought have been reinforced over the centuries, such as trust in legible signs, a need for order and predictability, and the latent dangers of stereotypical assumptions. He brings together traditional East Asian practices of face reading, Western theories of physiognomy, and cutting-edge facial recognition technologies. In doing so, the artist calls attention to increasingly urgent questions in an era of large-scale computer vision models, anthropometric assessment, and data-based monitoring. This multimedia exhibition condenses a complex interplay of photographs, found footage, object-based installations, and a video essay, making tangible the diverse aspects of face reading and facial recognition. The _ouroboros_, a symbol depicting a serpent eating its own tail, is a recurring motif, shaping the spatial design of the exhibition, which forms a circular tour. The _ouroboros_ is a metaphor for circular logic and highlights how patterns are repeated in an endlessly circulated system of belief across history as well as the feedback loops and data streams feeding machine learning and creating new systems of classification. Yiu’s visual archaeology of facial analysis draws on a vast array of found footage. Referencing Aby Warburg’s _Mnemosyne Atlas_, the material shows a visual culture developing at the intersection of spiritual readings, pseudoscientific classifications, and technical optimization. The artist uses prints on calligraphy paper and text fragments engraved into stone in order to offer connections to materials historically used in the East Asian tradition to convey knowledge. They are displayed alongside metallic, illuminated, and reflective surfaces characteristic of technological materials and offer a contrast. Together with his own photographs, Yiu weaves a porous and associative network that interlinks past and present, art and science. Finally, a video essay presents the artist as an avatar traversing a landscape later revealed to be his own face. In a voiceover, Yiu reflects on the history of facial recognition up to and including current developments including deep fakes and synthetic face images. His penetrating work reveals the growing power algorithms hold over our identities while inviting viewers to question our faith in what we believe is an objective gaze, whether it be spiritual, scientific, or algorithmic.