21 November 2025

Kaiyuan Yang’s photographic practice has consistently revolved around the central theme of the ‘self’ through the lens of the ‘self’. However, the self as he understands it is not a stable essence that can be directly represented, but rather a dynamic structure that is constantly being constructed and deconstructed through the interplay of the gaze, performance and the mirror image. His sustained focus on the image in the mirror means that his work naturally touches upon the core theme of the ‘mirror stage’ in the Lacanian sense: the establishment of self-identity is always dependent on an external, alien image. The person in the mirror is not a faithful reflection of the ‘self’, but rather a fictional image that the ‘self’ must borrow in order to recognise itself. In Conversations with the Reflection, this logic of the mirror image is taken to its most extreme—mirrored surfaces, snow-covered ground, mist and physical performance collectively form a visual allegory of the ‘people-pleaser’ personality; whilst viewing the work, the audience is unconsciously drawn into a reflection on their own self-construction.

In his work, the mirror is never a transparent medium, but rather an interface brimming with tension. The relationship between the image in the mirror and the person before it is neither a simple replication nor a pure fiction, but rather an ongoing, unfinished dialogue. The nature of this dialogue determines the performative dimension of his work. Yang makes no attempt to conceal photography’s constructed nature as ‘staged’ and ‘choreographed’; on the contrary, he actively presents this process of construction as an integral part of the work. The subjects’ movements, postures and facial expressions all carry a conscious theatricality; they do not ‘record’ a pre-existing emotion, but rather ‘produce’ one—forcing an inner state to manifest through external bodily performance. This path from the exterior to the interior precisely overturns our conventional understanding that ‘inner emotions are externalised as expressions’, revealing a darker layer of self-awareness: we do not first possess a certain self and then act it out; rather, it is through performance that we gradually come to know who we are.

This performative quality imbues his photography with a unique tension: everything in the frame has been meticulously staged and designed, yet it is precisely this staging that exposes the artificiality inherent in ‘naturalness’ and ‘reality’ themselves. Smoke, as a recurring visual element in his work, plays a pivotal role in this regard. Smoke both conceals and reveals, blurs and distinguishes; its translucency perfectly mirrors the ambiguous state of self-awareness—we can never fully see ourselves, yet we can never cease trying to do so. In Conversations with the Reflection, the shifting patterns of the mist keep the figures in the frame perpetually in a state of ‘about to emerge’ yet never fully revealed. This incompleteness is not a flaw, but rather the core of Yang’s photographic aesthetics: the self is not an object that can be ‘captured’, but a process that is perpetually ‘being captured’ yet never finally fixed.

On a broader level, Yang’s treatment of the ‘self’ is consistently embedded within specific socio-cultural contexts. The self he focuses on is not an isolated, closed-off individual, but rather an existence shaped through continuous interaction with others, social norms and cultural expectations. This approach enables his work to transcend a purely psychological portrayal, imbuing it with a social depth. The gaze in the mirror is both a gaze upon the self and a gaze from the other; it is both an internal self-examination and the internalisation of external social scrutiny. Kaiyuan Yang’s photography precisely captures the entanglement between these two—when a person attempts to find themselves in the mirror, what they see is never merely themselves, but also the gazes that have shaped them.