Yue Cheng

Installation

Sphère 3 : L'île et l'insulation (Sphere 3 : Island and Insulation) is a dynamic sculpture which takes its inspiration both from traditional Inuit dwellings and from scientific projects such as Biosphere 2 and Sub Biosphere 2. Its aim is to explore the imaginary world of isolated habitats by creating a living sculpture in the form of a spherical ecosystem. This microcosm functions as a post-apocalyptic refuge, simulating a habitat after the rise of the oceans in the Anthropocene era, and constitutes a speculative fabulation around the ecological crisis and human survival.

The project is part of a planned terraforming process aimed at recreating ecosystems capable of sustaining life in a hostile environment, drawing on some of the methods experimented with in Biosphere 2. It questions the limits of anthropocentrism and initiates a dialogue between nature and technology, imagining a new world where humans begin to inhabit bio-architectural structures – immense prehistoric mycelia. In this meta-universe, the boundaries between human and animal are blurred and transformed, while bodies become hybrid entities, blending machines and microelectronics.

Yue Cheng

Born in China in 1995, Yue Cheng is an artist-researcher. She is currently a doctoral student in artistic creation at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains in collaboration with the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Her project draws on her experiences of growing up in China at a time of rapid development, when the question of the intersection between anthropocentrism and ecological crisis was constantly arising. Based on current environments in the Anthropocene era, she questions the future of human habitation in a speculative fabulation, exploring different scales of ecosystems, such as underground cities, artificial islands, the sphere, and the mycelial system, thus linking phenomena that were once disparate, but are nonetheless constitutive of our modernity, such as the advent of consumer society, the permanence of old revolutionary discourses and urbanisation. Her projects are not limited to a single form: from photography to video, taking in sculpture and digital hybrids, she adopts a poetic approach in order to create a condensed microcosm that reflects a global, non-dualistic vision of the world. Her works, imbued with philosophical perspectives from both East and West, become neutral spaces where profound reflections on the spectacle can unfold. Her work invites viewers to question the notions of utopia and dreams, and to reflect on the sustainability of contemporary society and the relationship between man and his environment.

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