Yarli Allison^CA/UK

Yarli Allison is currently exploring subjects on digital humanity, belonging and coping mechanisms with a queering fictitious approach. Based on her displacement experiences, she embodies ‘emotional geography’ studies to compose both sculptural and virtual fictitious scenarios that are seemingly hopeful and functional, yet on the verge of falling apart. Often interacting with personas or creatures, these imagined worlds consist of her invented survival tactics and coping mechanisms. Allison utilizes the process of cognitive restructuring and belonging remapping to play with the sense of futility and the uncertain future of ‘what if’. Themes including border systems, datafication, and function creep are explored, along with skinships, queerness, and sexual objectification.

Allison graduated in 2017 with a first class honors MFA in Sculpture from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, having received the entry award of the year’s Yitzhak Danziger scholarship. Recent (2021-22) solo and group exhibition partners include V&A Museum (London), Tai Kwun Contemporary (Hong Kong), Barbican Centre (London), LINZ FMR (Austria), FACT (Liverpool) and Institute of Contemporary Arts: ICA (London). Recent grants include Hong Kong’s Arts Council Project Grant (2019) and England’s Arts Council Project Grant (2022). She is a member of London’s Asia-Art-Activism network.

Datafication 〈Act 1〉 : May Ian Valley 0101 《數據化 〈事件一〉: 美人谷0101》 is part of Yarli Allison’s mixed-media series exploring themes of digital humanity. In the looping dreamscape of 'Act 1', she imagines daily influences of AI emergence and gamification on one's behaviour—taking the most intimate sexual encounters as departure.