Email: ymaisieluo@gmail.com
Education
2024 Master of Fine Arts, Mason Gross School of Art, Rutgers University, NJ, USA
2022 Master of Theological Studies in Religion and Ethics, Harvard Divinity School, MA, USA
2019 BA in Honors Studio Art and Religion, Swarthmore College, PA, USA
Full CV upon request
Artist statement
Using painting, writing, sculpture, performance, and animation, I examine the intimate connections between animal welfare, our everyday life, and the future of our planet. My practice addresses two related themes. One questions the aesthetics, ethics, and sustainability of Capitalism-influenced technology-dependent modern lifestyles. The other theme is about the liberation of animals in captivity. The two themes are closely connected as modern lifestyles often depend on exploiting animals and the environment.
My ideas often come from my daily life, which is currently in the US. I make visible post-consumer waste and the exploitation of animals and the environment. I invite people to acknowledge and identify with animal suffering. Playing with product packaging materials, I highlight the absurdity of marketing languages that further obscure our understanding of how the things we use and eat come to be.
Drawing inspiration from practices of liberation in human emancipatory traditions, I also portray visions of animal liberation, and I invite people to reflect on their relationship with wild and domesticated animals. In 2024, I began to imagine and make escape manuals for captive animals based on real animal escapes from captivity. But captive animals are my hypothetical audience. These manuals are for humans to acknowledge and grieve for the unfortunate and brutal reality of captive animals. The aesthetics of this series draw inspiration from signs and graphics used to share information in public spaces. This allows every human, regardless of what languages they speak, to engage with the narratives and message. The manuals push people to question the purpose of systems of captivity and to imagine a world in which humans co-exist with liberated animals. The process of actualizing this world is complex, but we must imagine new relationships and living situations with animals and the environment to change the current situation. The hope is that these visions of animal liberation will sow the seeds of actualizing multispecies flourishment.