Jordan Yi

Jordan Yi (2001) is a Korean-born artist specializing in drawing and painting. Heavily influenced by Western art history, children’s illustration, and cross-cultural symbolism, her work reframes human dilemmas through fantastical narratives. Themes of childhood and tension are at the core of her practice, captured by her signature juxtaposition of animal subjects in ominous scenarios. The result is an intimate and unsettling fusion of the whimsical and the macabre.

The pieces featured in ARACHNIDAE are allegorical realizations of a selection of vulnerable experiences. Linked by distinct sensations of dread, ambivalence, and the inexorable, each painting is a peek into a dreamscape of which the audience is merely a witness. The rabbit (or the hare) is the heart of the collection, serving as a loose rendition of self-portrait.

 

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A painting of what seems to be a lot of hares all piled on top of each other. They are all beige and brown, most of them the same brown color of the canvas, and they are all jumbled up and cannot be separated.

Heap. 2024. oil on canvas. Photo by Bob.

 
At the top of this painting, there is a large white bird with a red circle on its head holding a piece of meat in its beak out to another, smaller bird. Beneath them is a rabbit with part of its leg torn off, and a large, dark figure holds the leg.

The Baker’s Dozen. 2024. oil on canvas. Photo by Bob.

 
Photo showing 2 paintings, the first one on this webpage on the right, and a new one on the left: 2 animals dressed in human clothing inspecting a small rabbit on a barrel. 2 other rabbits are on the ground and behind them is a hay stack and a house.

Toil and Heap. 2024. oil on canvas. Photo by Bob.