Double Witness | Floor Talk with the Artist

Join artist Meng-Yu Yan 颜梦钰 on a guided tour exploring the Double Witness exhibition.

See more information about the Double Witness exhibition here.

About the Artist

Meng-Yu Yan 颜梦钰 is a photomedia-based, cross-disciplinary artist who blends digital photographic methods with analogue manipulation, sculpture, time-based mediums, and installation. Infused with Daoist philosophy and a love for darkness, the artist enjoys playing "photographic games" with their audience; amalgamating shadows, mirrors, light, glass, and water to conjure visual dreamscapes.

Characterised by spontaneity and experimentation Yan's practice conveys strong conceptual engagement with self-reflection and alienation. As a first-generation Australian-Chinese queer non-binary artist, Yan's work consistently confronts the intersections between race, culture, spirituality, sexuality, and gender identity. Marked by fragmentation, multiplicity, and the unconscious, their self-portraiture is reminiscent of Surrealist photographers such as Claude Cahun and Duane Michals. Using photography as a medium to channel otherworldly and paranormal phenomena, they are fascinated by spirit photography, divination, performative haunting, and astrological practices.

Yan's first solo exhibition 'occulere - vision & concealment' debuted at Dominik Mersch Gallery in 2017. In 2019 Meng was awarded the Ross Steele Scholarship to fund their residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France. Yan completed their Master of Fine Arts (Research) funded by the Australian Government RTP Scholarship at UNSW Art & Design in 2020. Their research explored queer spectrality and cultural haunting through experimental photography.

Yan is currently a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize for 2023. Their exhibit Heaven; just another ruin will be online at Dominik Mersch Gallery from 19 April-3 June 2023.