Ontwikkelbijdrage

Mickey Yang received a grant with which to explore her fascination with artificial landscapes and sculptures from theme parks, zoos and props for educational museums. She wants to discover whether she can make the techniques used to create these sculptures her own. In this way, she innocently uses the surely manipulative strategies from these consumer and advertising-driven worlds, with an artistic purpose. She wants to explore what effect making sculptures with these techniques can have on her images. In addition, she would like to engage with people who make these sculptures for theme parks, to learn from them.

Mickey creates objects, videos and performances that she integrates into multimedia installations, using audio, video and sculptural elements. In her work, she tries to change the way people look at things while rediscovering a playful innocence. She likes to use manipulative strategies from media and commercial advertising to achieve this. Her installations are often dynamic: the sculptures often move, vibrate and rotate in sync with narrative elements such as video and sound. Recurring themes in her work include image representation, wonder, mass culture, the subjective experience of our collective memory and the search for material culture and (traditional) craftsmanship.