Multilateral
Aiko Yuen
Multilateral 2024
Portrait of D'Jana Biden
Oil on canvas
66 x 152 cm
About the Artwork
Multilateral is part of an activist research project series called The Catharsis of Painting. The series challenges Western idolised patriarchal representations of women in the history of art through what Yuen calls the ‘Queer Feminine’. Working closely with her non-binary friend D’Jana (pronounced Di-ya-na), Yuen painted them in a series of detailed oil paintings that hijack the materiality of high art. Through this collaboration, she elevates queer ways of being in the world while queering the traditional relationship between artist and sitter. This acknowledges and highlights the collective trauma of the queer community and the importance of community to queer individuals.
About the Artist
Aiko Van Hay Yuen is an Australian painter of Asian diaspora, currently maintaining her practice on Wurundjeri Land of the Kulin Nations in Naarm/ Melbourne. Recently graduated from the Honours Fine Art course at RMIT School of Art, Aiko excels in contemporary figurative oil painting that honours non-binary representation while interrogating her own sexual and gender trauma and reclaiming this agency through creative catharsis. Aiko has participated in several exhibitions in Melbourne, Japan, and Singapore.