Sheung Yiu

In his winning project, Sheung Yiu (b. 1991) investigates how faces across different cultures and technological contexts serve to prefigure character traits and foretell the future. (Inter)Faces of Predictions brings together traditional East Asian practices of facial analysis, Western theories of physiognomy, and contemporary facial recognition technologies. He takes an analysis of his own face to demonstrate how historical beliefs and modern algorithm-based processes each reproduce similar prejudices and stereotypes. His project is an invitation to think critically about how we interpret human faces and what assumptions we make about them. Yiu’s approach brings together current discourses, archival holdings, his original photographic works, technical methods, and his broader artistic practice. In this, he offers a possible bridge in both content and method between past and present, as well as between art and science. Curated by Veronika Epple.