YuYu, born YuLiang Liu, is a Taiwanese-born artist working in photography, digital art and performance, exploring his identity as a foreigner and a member of the Asian and queer communities. He holds a Master's degree in architecture and moved to Berlin in 2015, where he first worked as a photographers' model before becoming a photographer himself.
YuYu's practice as an artist began with a solo show at SoHo House Berlin. His work was later published in magazines and books and entered the Tom of Finland Foundation's permanent collection in Los Angeles. When the Covid-19 pandemic halted his work, he discovered NFTs and began experimenting with the new medium. He has said the shift let him build a global network for his practice and offered tools to push back against the traditional art world's rigidities.
In 2023 YuYu staged his first solo NFT exhibition, “GAG”, transforming the IHAM gallery in Paris with plastic-wrapped furniture, dimmed red light and an industrial soundscape made with the London-based producer Marcel Dune. The three new works on view borrowed from classical painting and BDSM imagery to examine power, submission and the myth of the tortured genius, and were released as NFTs on SuperRare. One piece, Joke's on You, replaced the figures of 17th-century Flemish masters such as Vermeer and Rembrandt with YuYu's own face and body, referencing the silence that surrounded AIDS deaths two decades earlier.“GAG” was also presented that June at the Non Fungible Conference in Lisbon.
That same year YuYu contributed an editioned work to World of Women's Spring Artfest, a quarterly showcase of sixteen artists curated by Nu Thuy Anh "Dani" Ton.That week he also exhibited in a group show at The Block in Lisbon, curated by Yara Agency, alongside Infinite Mantra, Ray Vagner and Jaen.The Swing, a 2022 painting, was included in a profile of NFT Asia, the collective supporting Asian and Asia-based artists in Web3.
