Fairy tale enchantment meets the uncanny as a mermaid eats a raw slice of her own tail and a woman with the wrinkled head of a Sphynx cat poses nude in the sculptural work of Tina Yu. Using polymer clay as her primary material, Yu painstakingly sculpts figurines into mysterious creatures that are incredibly ornate and lifelike. Yu shares her much of process on her Instagram account where she's gathered over 130,000 followers, some of whom have even shared photos of themselves made up to look like Yu's sculptures.A photo posted by T I N A Y U A R T (@tina.yu.artist) on
Nov 14, 2016 at 9:48am PST
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In a recent Instagram post about her tail-eating mermaid, called Kainalu, Yu asked, "Everyone has different interpretation of an artwork, as an audience what do you think I'm trying to express through this piece?" Some of the responses included straightforward observations like, "I think it says don't take yourself too seriously," or "Humans are destroying nature." While others made more conceptual remarks like, "to me it kind of represents how the media is normalizing and romanticizing the idea of self-destruction," and "An individual must devour and destroy oneself to truly know and understand themselves."A video posted by T I N A Y U A R T (@tina.yu.artist) on
Jul 24, 2016 at 8:13pm PDT
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