Tia Yoon

Tia Yoon is a London based nonbinary artist who works in painting and performance, their work explores attempts and failures in communication, through the reclamation of alienation in self created safe spaces, and through shamanistic experiences of channelling energies between unknown worlds. They completed the master painting program of the Royal College of Art after having completed their BA Fine Art from Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Tia’s work has been shown and featured internationally such as Mister Motley Magazine and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, McaM Ming Contemporary Art Museum in Shanghai, and Venice International Performance Art Week. They have presented their first solo exhibition at Tapir Gallery in Berlin 2022. They have also organised performance workshops funded by Gerrit Rietveld Academie, NL as well as published their writing in Wraith Zine, London.

Tia Yoon’s work explores communication—its attempts and its failure—through shamanistic experiences of channelling energies between transgression and tenderness, through the spectacles of unknown worlds of otherness. This is done through reclamation of alienation, engagement with fantasies via posthuman spectacles, and caring through radical dissociation from humanism. Yoon is interested in ancient mythologies from the era when spirits lived alongside humans, and through the works they aim to awaken elements of that world. Yoon engages with ideas of identity and resistance to biopower by drawing from these ancient fantasy worlds in which all kinds of experiences and lifestyles are embraced—constituting a fantasy, perhaps, for contemporary society too. The work features fictional characters who communicate with fictional spirits through both human and spirit languages, such as rituals and working with witchcraft materials as spells to open doors for experiences. Yoon also draws inspiration from queer and underground club culture, working with radical tenderness as a form of empowerment, self-exploration, and as a tool to create space.They are currently researching possibilities of fluidity between digital and painting’s performative energy. Yoon wishes to create and occupy safe spaces, framed by broken narratives, through which they can communicate with their audience via performance and paintings.

CHAPTER 3

Posthumanism Approaches to Biopolitics

As Haraway notes, “Gender, race or class consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical experience of contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. ” What can we do about this dark cloud of settler-colonial patriarchal violence under which we live? Is there a solution? I often wonder if my frustrations towards human nature will continue when the binary or dualism between gender (and all the biological qualities that lie within the cloud of power distribution) is destroyed. This thought has lead me towards a discovery and interest in posthuman theory. I relate deeply with Braidotti’s motivation behind her exploration into posthumanism: “...My interest in the posthuman is directly proportional to the sense of frustration I feel about the human."

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PDF: HUMAN OR NON-HUMAN?