(Inter)faces Of Predictions by Sheung Yiu at C/O Berlin

In his long-term project, Finland-based artist researcher Sheung Yiu investigates how faces have been used across cultures and technologies over time to predict character traits and an individual’s future.

Overview

Using his own face, Yiu portrays how similar patterns of thought have been reinforced over the centuries, such as trust in legible signs, a need for order and pre-dictability, and the latent dangers of stereotypical assumptions. He brings together traditional East Asian practices of face reading, Western theories of physiognomy, and cutting-edge facial recognition technologies. In doing so, the artist calls attention to increasingly urgent questions in an era of large-scale computer vision models, anthropometric assessment, and data-based monitoring.

Curated by Veronika Epple, this multimedia exhibition condenses a complex interplay of photographs, found footage, object-based installations, and a video essay, making tangible the diverse aspects of face reading and facial recognition. The ouroboros, a symbol depicting a serpent eating its own tail, is a recurring motif, shaping the spatial design of the exhibition, which forms a circular tour. The ouroboros is a metaphor for circular logic and highlights how patterns are repeated in an endlessly circulated system of belief across history as well as the feedback loops and data streams feeding machine learning and creating new systems of classification.

Yiu’s visual archaeology of facial analysis draws on a vast array of found footage. Referencing Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, the material shows a visual culture developing at the intersection of spiritual readings, pseudoscientific classifications, and technical optimization.

The artist uses prints on calligraphy paper and text fragments engraved into stone in order to offer connections to materials historically used in the East Asian tradition to convey knowledge. They are displayed alongside metallic, illuminated, and reflective surfaces characteristic of technological materials and offer a contrast. Together with his own photographs, Yiu weaves a porous and associative network that interlinks past and present, art and science.

Finally, a video essay presents the artist as an avatar traversing a landscape later revealed to be his own face. In a voiceover, Yiu reflects on the history of facial recognition up to and including current developments including deep fakes and synthetic face images. His penetrating work reveals the growing power algorithms hold over our identities while inviting viewers to question our faith in what we believe is an objective gaze, whether it be spiritual, scientific, or algorithmic.

C/O Berlin presents (Inter)faces of Predictions, the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition in Germany, accompanied by an extensive publication. Since 2020, the C/O Berlin Talent Award has been made possible by the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung.

About The Artist

Sheung Yiu (b. 1991, HKG/FI) is a Hong-Kong-born, image-centered artist and researcher based in Helsinki. His artwork explores imaging practices emerging at the intersection of photography and large-scale computation. At the moment, he is looking at the history of face reading and facial recognition in order to understand how photographs become predictions. His works take the form of photographs, video essays, desktop performances, exhibition installations, and artist books.