Becoming-with in Anicka Yi’s Artistic Practice

Abstract

Abstract The intent of this article is to investigate the works of Anicka Yi, looking for the elements that make this artist a primary figure in the artistic redefinition of the category of human and the boundary that divides it from everything that is more than human. After a short introduction, the theoretical aspects expressed by philosophers, anthropologists or academics of other disciplines such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers and Donna Haraway are analyzed to define the worlding, the central theme of this paper. At that point, the artist and her practice are introduced, and then, the Metaspore exhibition of 2022, in which the four works examined in this article are present. These: Le Pain Symbiotique, When Species Meet Part 2 (Vegetable Psychology), Releasing The Human From The Human and Biologizing The Machine (Spillover Zoonotica), are then presented and studied, combining the artistic process with theoretical concepts by Anna L. Tsing, Rosi Braidotti, Marylin Strathern and Elizabeth Povinelli among others. The article, therefore, attempts to highlight how Yi’s works and artistic making are particularly effective examples of worlding, becoming-with of human and more than human. Works are both a new perspective of investigation on life and a new urgent posture toward the future in the era of the Anthropocene.