Baroness by Yushi Li: (m)Other

Photographer Yushi Li explores desire, fantasy, and the male body in her third edition of Baroness. Through a photographic study of the male body, she presents a playful, slightly violent, but gentle and almost comical gaze. The male bodies in her works are not intended for consumption but are represented in their relation to other elements in the frame. Li questions the gaze through different works, such as 'My Tinder Boys' and 'Your Reservation is Confirmed', which explore consumption and satisfaction.

Format: Hardback
Length: 138 pages
Publication date: 05 May 2022
Publisher: BARON

For the third edition of Baroness, photographer Yushi Li takes us on a journey of desire, fantasy, and looking through a photographic study of the male body. For Lis debut book cover, the photographer has chosen a photograph of a penis. In a heteropatriarchy, where men are represented in the media as big and strong, here the penis is small, flaccid, and trapped, presenting a playful, slightly violent, but gentle and almost comical gaze. The naked male bodies in Lis works are not intended for consumption. Instead, the male body is represented in its relation to other elements in the frame, which always involves a staging of a scene, a fantasy. The domestic space and the mundane activities in the works invite the viewer to see beyond the naked body. The man in her images is the phallus, the signifier of desire – the desire of the (m)Other. Lis portrayal of the body is a condensation of the imaginary: the unknown paternal and maternal body and the fantasy of the absent (m)Other. Throughout the book, Li questions the gaze through different works. ’My Tinder Boys is a set of photographs of naked young men in their kitchens – always soft-fleshed and flaccid, mostly gazing off-camera. ’Your Reservation is Confirmed, further develops ideas around consumption and satisfaction. Rather than Tinder, this time its Airbnb – a hook-up App for houses. Each image takes us to a new room, in a new house, occupied by a new naked man and often Li herself, fully clothed, engaged in some kind of leisure activity. In Lis most recent series ’Paintings, Dreams, and Love, we are invited to look at paintings through a different lens. Inspired by classical oil paintings of female nudes, Li creates a ’cornucopia of men in the diptych ’The Feast, while Titians ’Death of Actaeon is re-enacted, with the artist.’

Weight: 1g
Dimension: 260 x 200 x 50 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781838424848