KIKI wu

BIOGRAPHY

UGLYKIKI (Kiki Wu) is a digital media artist from Taiwan who specializes in creating imaginative and thought-provoking works of art. Through her art, she delves into the realm of the metaphysical, exploring the concept of human existence and the relationships between nature and technology. With her video art, digital paintings, and XR practices, she has been exploring the transformation of cultural symbols and their manifestation in different dimensions, from physical realities, cyberspaces, to psychological states.


ARTIST STATEMENT

UGLYKIKI's digital paintings also depict intangible experiences and relationships that transcend the physical world. Her use of energetic and flowing lines invites viewers to enter a secret inner temple, where they can breathe deeply into this magical universe.

UGLYKIKI’s artworks have been shown at international exhibitions, including the "Art in Flux: Radical Embodiment" exhibit at the Barbican Center in London, the "Octobre Numérique-Faire Monde Art Festival" in France, and the "Kaohsiung Young Art" show at the Pier 2 Art Center in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

Check out more of UGLYKIKI's work!

Link

PLACENTA

UGLYKIKI, Placenta, HD Video, 00:02:00, 1920 x 1080 px, 2022

Placenta is an video art about the true nature of dreams. As a lucid dreamer, I often feel multiple-existences in dreams - I can feel my dream body and physical body which is in real life sleeping. Dreams are different realities, and my memories from other realities are entangled. And what frustrates me is I don’t know how to put those experiences in word. Nothing seems rational. So I create art.

THE RELEASE

UGLYKIKI, THE RELEASE, Interactive Website - Virutal Sound Installation, Variable dimension, 2021 

The Release is a collaborative, conceptual project in which I investigate the trinity that has been experimented in my previous practices - The release from the human body, the release from materialism, and the release from creatorship. Inspired by human traditions regarding death, The Release  is created to inquire whether the human spirit is attached to the material world. Only through death will we realize the true disembodiment from the current world. 

WUJI

UGLYKIKI, Wuji, Interactive Website - Virtual Sound Installation, Variable dimensions, 2021 

Wuji is a sound installation that explores the boundaries of the human body. In Wuji, human figures are intertwined, the identities are eliminated, and the personal boundaries for those bodies are blurring. The distorted and entangled visual connects my childhood memory of playing with Chinese knots. Before creating written characters and languages, ancient Chinese use knots to communicate and record histories. After thousands of years of iterations, today, the Chinese knot is no longer a tool for preserving history but a decoration that inherits the spirit of appreciating mystic patterns' beauty. Through twisting, weaving, and binding, all ropes are tied tightly to strengthen the beliefs of unity in traditional Chinese culture.


canon

UGLYKIKI, Canon, HD Video, 00:01:00, 1920 x 1080 px, 2019

In Canon, I sculpted a dancing body inside a ghostly head with open-source 3D software, Blender, and then synchronized my bodily movements with a 3D object using a Kinect sensor. These works incorporated the spirit of physical practices designed to benefit the well-being of people, such as Qigong and Yoga. Like the original definition in music, "Canon is a contrapuntal (counterpoint-based) compositional technique that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played during a given duration". The Canon represents the changing synchronization of the inner mind and outer appearance of the human body, as well as implies the invisible coordination between computer algorithms and the input data from man's determination. Infusing my soul into a computer-generated object, Canon is a sublimation of cooperation between humans and machines.