Forbes interviews Yushi Li on the male nude
Yushi Li, The Feast, 2020.
“The male nude was the ideal and principal subject in art in ancient Greece and early renaissance art, since the early 19th century, the female nude started becoming the most prevalent subject in art. Unlike the male nude, which is often perceived as an autonomous subject, the female nude is normally presented in a passive way. I think in my work, I try to present men in a different way to question this masculine and feminine opposition, and cast the gaze onto the male body, which can be equally eroticized and desired as the female body.” Yushi Li.
Yushi Li’s work is currently in the seminal exhibition Nude at Fotografiska in New york.
Li’s image The Nightmare is strikingly similar to Allen Jones’s 1969 sculpture Table, in which a female mannequin is bent over and used as a seat – a pointed reference to the casual use of female bodies for the benefit of a male artist? Yushi Li says “I am both the violator who tries to invade their private space and also the desiring object who participates in their vulnerability”.
Read the full article by Grace Banks here.
