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A Solo Exhibition by Benedict Yu

'The Roots You Gave Me, the Wings I’ve Found.'

24 June – 8 August 2025

LOY Contemporary Art Gallery is proud to present The Roots You Gave Me, the Wings I’ve Found, a solo exhibition by Singaporean artist Benedict Yu. This exhibition marks a significant moment, as LOY welcomes Yu as the first local artist to exhibit prior to our SG60 programme, which will spotlight a diverse group of local talent. The exhibition will feature new works by the artist as well as a curated selection of his most significant works, tracing the spiritual and multicultural threads that define his artistic journey.

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The exhibition title, The Roots You Gave Me, the Wings I’ve Found, draws from a personal and reflective letter from the artist to his aging parents in Taiwan. It is a meditation on love, memory, and the evolving nature of connection in a digital world. Navigating the challenges of being physically distant while emotionally present, the artist employs Virtual Reality (VR) and Extended Reality (XR) as new languages for familial storytelling.

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Central to the exhibition are Yu’s new works, Father and Mother, a pair of single-channel digital videos created as part of his The Roots You Gave Me, the Wings I’ve Found series. In collaboration with his parents, these videos feature a real-time digital tracing of their presence using 3D painting tools, capturing both their likeness and spirit. Yu explains:

“Saying ‘I love you’ to our parents can often feel like the hardest thing to do. Within families, love is rarely simple; it’s woven through gestures both gentle and strained, through shared histories and sometimes long silences. We may carry unresolved tensions, misunderstandings, or regrets, yet deep down, the bond remains. A single photo or video can stir the desire to reconnect, but expressing those feelings, especially to those closest to us, can feel awkward, even impossible.

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These moments are interwoven with intimate, sometimes difficult conversations: ‘What does love mean in our family?’, ‘What do you wish you had said or done differently?’ In this work, my parents have the agency in memorializing their being, shaping their digital selves through chosen postures, colors, and emotional truths.

In an era dominated by artificial intelligence and algorithmic memory, where technology can fabricate familial memories from static images, ‘The Roots You Gave Me, the Wings I’ve Found’ serves as a gentle act of reclaiming authorship. Rather than allowing machines to dictate how we remember our loved ones, this work invites us to co-create, to preserve presence with intention, and to hold space for authenticity in the face of rapid digital evolution.

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At its heart, ‘The Roots You Gave Me, the Wings I’ve Found’ is not just an exhibition—it is an invitation to reflect on how we communicate with our loved ones and to question how technology is shaping our memories. Most importantly, it asks us to rediscover what it means to say, however we can, ‘I love you.’”

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The gallery is delighted to collaborate with artists who leverage technology, given its ever-growing presence in our lives, from capturing memories to shaping new artistic expressions. LOY is committed to presenting artists who bring these innovative visions to life, seeing their practice as central to the future of contemporary art.

 

Exhibited alongside these new works is a selection of Yu's notable works, including those previously shown at SomoS Arts (Berlin, 2023), Zwölf Apostel Kirchegemeinde (Berlin, 2024), and Singapore Art Week (Singapore, 2025). These works continue his ongoing exploration of what he calls “VR Spirituality,” a personal inquiry that ultimately led him back to his family's archives. His oeuvre reflects his dual Christian and Buddhist heritage: cosmic mandalas created through meditative practice reconcile his family's spiritual traditions, while the mixed media triptych Body, Mind, Soul layers old music sheets into collages that serve as the artist's personal energy chart, transforming inherited melodies into visual representations of collective memory. Together, these contemplative pieces bring together spiritual traditions with digital-age exploration, uncovering themes of love, memory, and spiritual bonds.

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To further engage visitors in discovering these novel ways of expression, the gallery will host a series of VR Painting workshops based on the artist's works, specifically designed for families.

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