2025 Asymmetry Distinguished Lecture Series at The CourtauldThe power, the joy and the destruction: Journeys through ModernityRicardo Yui

Ricardo Yui, Orthodoxie et Orthopraxie, 2018. Courtesy of the artist

Ricardo Yui’s films probe the cultural foundations of modernity and its narratives of progress, following precarious lives on the margins of failed systems. They unfold as journeys through sites marked by rupture — Greece in the aftermath of the debt crisis, a Palestinian village left in ruins after the Nakba, and the upheavals of urban development in Lima.

In this lecture, Yui will reflect on the contradictions of modernity through his personal journey as an artist, from his initial excitement about the modernisation of Lima, to the deep disenchantment of his later works, which are haunted by modernity’s broken promises, the shadow of European colonialism, and the ruins of capitalism.

Focusing on his most recent work Kong, Yui’s talk turns to the long history of Chinese migration to Peru, exploring the critical and affective potential of shamanism and symbolic returns. This short film is part of a new body of work that examine diasporic experience through the lens of tradition, territory, and language.

This is the second event in the 2025 Asymmetry Distinguished Lecture Series: Psychedelic Reason. This annual programme of artist talks, conversations and screenings provides a platform for artists, curators and scholars of East and Southeast Asian heritage to share their research and practice with wider audiences, focusing on issues of transculturality and representation in the global contemporary.

Convened by Dr Wenny Teo, Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Asian Art at The Courtauld; Michèle Ruo Yi Landolt, Director at Asymmetry; and Dr Yayu Zheng, Asymmetry Postdoctoral Fellow at The Courtauld.

Free entry, book a ticket here