Mirror Flower (Mirror Flower I: Blade, Mirror Flower II: Mirror Stage, Mirror Flower III: Flower in a Mirror, Moon on the Water)
Partner Programme
Artist Statement
Yiting Chu (b. 2002, Zhejiang, China) lives and works in Shanghai, China. She graduated from Donghua University in 2025 with a Bachelor of Management degree in Information Management and Information Systems. She will begin her Master's studies in Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex (United Kingdom) in Autumn 2026.
Chu's practice primarily employs portrait photography as its medium, with her identity constantly shifting between "model" and "creator"—she inserts her own body as a variable into the scene while simultaneously directing the narrative of the image from the creator's perspective. This dual position imbues her work with a central question: in the interplay between looking and being looked at, how is reality experienced as real? She is particularly concerned with the power dynamics between the modern social system and the individual—how human will is shaped within precisely operating structures, and how it in turn revises and propels reality. She attempts to build connections between "computable systems" and "irreducible desire," and her work can be seen as visual testimony to this exploration.
Work Statement
The Mirror Flower series uses the metaphor of "flowers in a mirror and the moon's reflection on water"—an illusion of beautiful but intangible things. The three works progress in layers: from recognizing and confronting the coercive forces behind the illusion, to deliberately suspending the illusion in order to look directly at the truth, and finally, after discerning its fictive nature, choosing to embrace that illusion as reality.
Mirror Flower I: Blade
Within the constraints set by me, the photographer interacted with me using a sword blade. The long pearl necklace and lace gloves formed a contradictory tangle—both adornment and restraint. At the moment the veil was lifted, I made a choice of interaction. As the one who took on the blade, I constructed a new relationship between self and other through the balance between my fingertips and the blade, allowing obstructed autonomy to surge toward a new outlet and materializing the most natural flow of libido.
Mirror Flower II: Mirror Stage
In a scene piled high with fresh flowers and pearls, the mirror reflected a complete, beautiful assemblage of images, yet I was not captured by this "desire-producing machine." The photographer called for my gaze from my "absence"—my refusal to enter the pre-existing narrative—and I responded by directing my look from the mirror toward the lens, which became the big Other of this provisional scene. The flower arrangement was not the object that truly connected with me; rather, the genuine connection was the complicit examination staged by me and the photographer amidst the flowers, exploring how the world is experienced as real.
Mirror Flower III: Flower in a Mirror, Moon on the Water
Although the mirror image is not our true self or essence, people, because of its harmony and completeness, misrecognize it as themselves and use it as the basis for their ideas of who or what they are. I discerned the strangeness within that mirror image, but in the end I chose to hold my veil, keeping the world blurred before my eyes, and pressed a kiss upon the reflection in the mirror, accepting that misrecognition. I acknowledged it as an important anchor and point of departure within a wavering reality.
Mirror Flower (Mirror Flower I: Blade, Mirror Flower II: Mirror Stage, Mirror Flower III: Flower in a Mirror, Moon on the Water) was presented in Mind × Body: Catalyst Phenomenon Archive, organised by the Reality Intelligence Association as part of London Design Festival 2026.
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