Yu Ji - Origin of the Tiger

P·P·O·W is pleased to present Origin of the Tiger, interdisciplinary artist Yu Ji's first solo exhibition in New York City. Employing basic materials such as wood, concrete, metal, and plaster along with organic matter and everyday objects, Yu's sculptures and installations investigate the potency of the fragment, atavistic memory, and the concept of place, both bodily and topographically. The importance of play and collaboration are at the heart of Yu Ji's practice, often telling stories of human vulnerability and resiliency. In a new series of sculptures, installation, collage, sound, and video, Yu presents the results of a three-year itinerant practice spent between Shanghai, Cambodia, and New York City. Encompassing a journey that began during a self-organized six-month residency and children's workshop in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, culminating in her final immigration to New York City's Chinatown, Origin of the Tiger is an assemblage of fragments of what could be carried, memories of what was left behind, and the array of relationships forged along the way. Origin of the Tiger takes its title from a traditional Cambodian folktale in which a king, queen, chief ministers, and royal astrologer transform themselves into the body parts of a tiger to survive a dangerous trek. The resulting exhibition uses a non-Hellenistic and composite approach to sculpture and installation to communicate a universal story of migration outside the bounds of language, time, and geography.