Research Catalogue

I work at the boundary where a finite biological object asymptotically approaches zero and, through this disappearance, gives birth to an infinite aesthetic event — a singularity. The series “Singularity of Beauty” is an ongoing investigation into the moment when decay, entropy, and controlled human intervention collide to rupture the visible world and generate a new, non-representational order. Method: Asymptotic Ritual A chosen organic system (bird, bouquet, insect colony, fungal network) is placed on a prepared surface and deliberately abandoned to natural forces — heat, humidity, insects, gravity, time. During a fixed ritual period (7 days in the current cycle), the object decays following an exponential law analogous to f(t) = a·e⁻ᵏᵗ. The artist is absent; only documentation occurs. At t → ∞ (practically: when the biological object approaches zero), the artist re-enters as a second asymptotic operator. Selective pigment application, removal of material, and layering transform the residue into a visual limit — a singularity point where the initial object has vanished, yet infinite meaning emerges. The final state is neither representation nor abstraction; it is the frozen event of the limit itself. Core Principles Decay is not a theme; it is the first author. Time is treated as a physical material with measurable half-life. Human intervention functions as a controlled perturbation that forces the system past its natural equilibrium into aesthetic infinity. The resulting image is a palimpsest of two incompatible temporalities: biological time (unstoppable) and artistic time (intermittent, intentional). The “demon” is not a depicted figure but the mathematical event of the singularity: the instant when order, passing through zero, becomes infinite and alien.

This exposition documents my explorations of pondering with pine trees. Tämä ekspositio dokumentoi yritykseni miettiä mäntyjen kanssa. Den här ekspositionen dokumenterar mina försök att fundera med furor.

This exposition gathers all the essential information needed to get started with the Research Catalogue (RC) platform at the Iceland University of the Arts (IUA). It offers a clear overview of how to create a profile, start an exposition, and navigate the basic functions of the platform. The goal is to provide staff with a central reference point for working with RC in the context of artistic research and institutional use.

The histories, stories, and names of Chinese railroad workers who dedicated their lives to constructing the U.S. Transcontinental Railroad have remained in the shadows for over a century. Completed in 1869, the railroad was a monumental achievement in America’s ‘Manifest Destiny’ during the nineteenth century. But despite their contributions, the Chinese laborers have not received the recognition they deserve. This project seeks to remember Chinese railroad workers via arts-based research methods (ABR). Archives are not merely repositories of the past but also products of political power. In this light, the project poses a key methodological question: How can art-making critically reconfigure the power of archives and lost history? We seek to ask questions, initiate a dialogue, acknowledge the absence, and give form to the invisible. Building upon the historical recovery work of previous scholars, we reconstruct fragmented pieces through remixed artworks. The current article highlights key artworks that demonstrate the scope and variety of a much larger project (Yu 2025b). We dedicate this work to the Chinese master railroad builders––to the great-grandfathers––whose stories and names demand remembrance.

The concept of spatial context is often presented and visualized commonly through its relation to the built environment. Its significance predominantly plays a fundamental role in understanding the world and forming relations between various diverse experiences, and interpretations of reality. These influences, in which knowledge is produced and transformed by inhabiting the process of being seen, felt, and perceived, overlap where the notion of time unfolds intricate reflections of itself regarding happenings, entities, and physical elements. By exploring the spatial context in a non-linear timeline, it is possible to identify unique hidden dimensions that enrich the understanding of the totality that is related to spaces and their surroundings. This nonlinearity is achievable through the phenomenological understanding of lived spaces which brings mental, physical, and sensory, at the same time largely subjective realities to conceivable participation. With these guidelines, this research consists of an artistic exploration that aims to visually investigate artistic methods and processes of revealing extended visual qualities of mental space, and what type of connections are intertwined within its architectonic surroundings. My aim is to phenomenologically uncover hidden dimensions inherited within mental space. Therefore I destabilize conventional meanings of space by visually exploring and rendering the mental and emotional geographies that shape our lived experience, internalizing and revealing the constructedness of mental spatiality through an artistic process that reflects psychogeographic embodying. By challenging linear and objective representations of space by engaging in an artistic exploration of mental and emotional landscapes, I unfold non-linear timelines, subjective lived experiences, and the overlaps of perception and time, where memory and the present co-narrate within us.

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