2023 Asymmetry Distinguished Lecture Series at The CourtauldIntimate SystemsTrevor Yeung and Qu Chang

Trevor Yeung, I could be a good boyfriend, 2013 (modified form 2011), Dionaea muscipula 'G16 Slack's giant', Body fluid, Butterflies, Distilled and Spring water, Laboratory equipment. Image courtesy of the artist.

Hong Kong-based artist Trevor Yeung often uses live plants, insects and small animals in his work, creating intimate ecologies within the space of the gallery. Working across a variety of media, Yeung’s installations prompt us to think about how our emotional and behavioural conditions are shaped by the systems and structures of control that make up the fabric of our everyday lives.

In the final event of the 2023 Asymmetry Lecture Series ‘Energies of Attachment: Rethinking Intimacy in Contemporary Chinese and Sinophone Art’, the artist will give a short presentation of his practice, before he is joined in conversation with the curator Qu Chang, a friend of the artist who has written extensively on his work. Their conversation will begin with a discussion of the artist’s childhood memories, stories of gardening and home-making, and move onto the notion of ‘lyrical storytelling’ and placemaking, queer desires, and the organic entanglements of diasporic feelings and their politics.

Organised by Dr Wenny Teo, Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art, The Courtauld; Michèle Ruo Yi Landolt, Deputy Director, Asymmetry Art Foundation, and Dr Feixuan Xu, Asymmetry Postdoctoral Fellow, The Courtauld.