For Shanghai-born Yu Ji, migration offers an apt metaphor for the complexities of contemporary experience and a new view on the creative possibilities inherent in an itinerant artistic practice. Inspired by a traditional Cambodian folktale in which the king’s family and ministers embark on a perilous journey by disguising themselves as parts of a tiger, her current exhibition “Origin of the Tiger” (on view through April 11, 2026) explores those possibilities through the importance of play and collaboration.
Starting at the entrance and winding through two spacious white rooms, Yu’s singular arrangements of fabricated and everyday objects suggest resting places along a route of travel. Chairs, Cambodian reed mats, collages, and photographs, as well as sound and video elements, recall experiences and gather mementos from the three years that Yu spent living, creating art, and traveling between Shanghai, Cambodia, and New York City.
Four folding chairs of varying dimensions, each featuring a cement cast of knees affixed to its seat, share the title Play Know Attention. Strategically positioned throughout the exhibition, these meticulously crafted sculptures—produced in collaboration with Shanghai-based artist Do Longyue—allude to the challenges of nomadic life, the desire for rest and comfort, and the quest for shelter and security. Similar narratives can be discovered in makeshift installations using reed mats that Yu designed in partnership with Khmer artisans. One such work, composed of two overlapping mats accompanied by bricks and assorted objects, provides visitors with a minimal yet adaptable setting for nourishment and relaxation. In Origin of the Tiger—CRUS, the reed mats are wrapped and curved within a bentwood frame held up by casts of children’s legs. Resembling a large cradle or perhaps an improvised shelter, this work offers an innovative and sustainable approach to sanctuary for those in search of refuge.
A nearby mobile, constructed from a wooden arm, hangers, paper sculptures, and a music box featuring a looped recording of children reciting “Origin of The Tiger” in Khmer, lyrically recalls Yu’s experience working as a teacher in Phnom Penh. Two framed collages resembling reliquaries combine fragmented photographs and children’s drawings and self-portraits, intertwining narratives of renovation and transformation with themes of time, childhood, and memory.
The chairs and improvised arrangements of gathered material evoke the disorientation of travel, as well as the multifaceted discourses and expressive possibilities to be discovered in the intermixing of cultures. The back room introduces another reconstruction, where several figurative sculptures facilitate a dialogue between past and present.
Flesh in Stone—Anthropos V was inspired by a monolithic ancient statue of Krishna lifting Mount Govardhana, housed in the National Museum of Cambodia. The statue’s history, including the misattribution and reassignment of its fragments to other sculptures, is reinterpreted through Yu’s revision. Emulating the sculpture’s restoration process, Yu creates her own reconstruction. Her newly conceived Buddha, its body parts cast, collected, and transported via suitcases from city to city, has been assembled into a large concrete and plaster sculpture and placed alongside other torso fragments from the artist’s ongoing “Flesh in Stone” series.
These interventions and reconstructions reflect on the ways that history, identity, culture, and religious practice have been appropriated by politics, tourism, and the desire to possess or collect elements of the past. Intent on restoring and renewing vision, Yu’s sculptural fragments, like the other objects and installations assembled here for the journey, open up a revisionist perspective on the vulnerabilities, resilience, and inspiration intrinsic to migratory life.