Bookface

Yan Gi Cheng

Opening & Performance: October 4th, 2018

einBuch.haus /  Winsstraße 42, 10405 Berlin

Bookface is a performance and installation art work which collapses boundaries between book arts and performance so as to formulate a hybrid space. It is a contemplation on the notion of a collective narcissism fervent in contemporary society in both virtual and physical environments.
Through the rise of platforms such as Facebook, subjectivity has become a multiplicity of perceptions, with the internet and social media as an arena for formulating alter egos and distorted impressions of our identities. This work stages an event as a subtraction and formalisation to certain phenomena of the modern gaze. It explores the trauma and beauty of the digital domain, and it’s multiplicity of narratives depicting identity, mortality, loss and love.
Bookface seeks to illustrate the displacement and the contin ual deferred replacement from the church to the internet and our search for meaning through the collective body. Through
the use of anamorphic selfie masks in book form, it seeks to illustrate our appropriation of the internet as a way of absurdly masking ones true identity.

Yan Gi Cheng

Yan Gi Cheng was born in England, in 1981, to parents of Hong  Kong dissent. He worked as a professional Designer for Hussein  Chalayan creating high tech fashion and video artworks before  completing his M.A. in Sculpture at Central Saint Martins,  London. His broad art practice is an ongoing investigation into  the convergence of book arts and performance art  centering around transnational identity, contemporary  philosophy, religious mythology and geographical landscape  as a space for historical renegotiation. In his practice he often  questions traditional forms of history making as well as cultural norms..

Performers List:
Yan Gi Cheng
Honi Ryan
Yuko Ishida
Jwana Ribeiro da Silva
Dmitry Povernov

Perfomance view: Yan Gi Cheng, Bookface einBuch.haus, 2018 (Photo: Mikyung Song)