This Sunday we’re taking a look at the studio of Anicka Yi. Yi is originally from South Korea and now lives and works in New York. As a conceptual artist, Yi tends to work with unconventional materials, though she is perhaps best known for her work with fragrances, an exceedingly ethereal, yet pervasive mode of conveying information to the art viewer.

Given Yi’s penchant for unconventional methods and materials, it’s no surprise that her studio doesn’t exactly scream “art space.” There’s none of the messiness of a painting or sculpture studio – the most we see is a somewhat frenetically stacked bookcase behind the artist.

This studio space in Yi’s apartment certainly looks more like the office of a designer. It’s very well-lit, and though we can’t see much of it, it seems fairly clean. There’s an interesting artwork hanging on the wall – I wonder if this was made by Yi herself. The artist reportedly spends time in her studio brainstorming new projects and doing research on how to carry out works – utilizing materials that not many other artists work with would probably mean doing a significant amount of online research and talking with experts in other fields.

Yi began working professionally as an artist in her mid-thirties, and has become widely known for her very unorthodox approach. Aside from her work with fragrances, she has also created works using flowers (fried tempura-style), pharmaceutical drugs, and live snails. Yi spends much of her time collaborating with scientists in order to best understand and be able to manipulate her materials at a microscopic, chemical level. 

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