Press release relating to an exhibition, 2000
Published by: Gasworks
Year published: 2000
Unpaginated.

Licked: Sonia Boyce and Yeu-Lai Mo was an exhibition that took place at Gasworks Gallery, London, 7 April - 7 May 2000. From the Press Release:

“Licked is an exhibition of video, photography, sound ands texts grappling with the promise, and disappointments, of multiculturalism in Britain. Sonia Boyce and Yeu-Lai Mo use the mouth as a metaphor for exchange between the foreign and the familiar.

The artists explore the ways racial identities are manipulated and stereotyped for questionable purposes. Their work gives a fresh, historically informed and open-ended point of view about the exciting and ever-changing mixture of different cultures in contemporary Britain.

Sonia Boyce presents a performance by three choirs of different nationalities. Elusive and unseen, they sing in separate areas of Gasworks Studios and Gallery. Multi-lingual voices permeate the building without coming from any identifiable source, asking the viewer to question cultural identity in relation to language and physicality.

Exploring prejudices in a different way, food and the hidden world of the Chinese takeaway inspires Yeu-Lai Mo. Her witty and incisive new digital images, sound work and calligraphic texts look at the way Western culture has borrowed and homogenised food, and identities, from countries around the world.

Texts by the renowned writer Marcus Verhagen accompany the exhibition, defining and further exploring the issues raised by the artists.”