Freemartins
Frieze Focus LA 2024 curated by Essence Harden
The exhibition builds on the artist’s exploration of a set of tunnels underneath the Mexico–U.S. border town of Mexicali, which was inhabited by Chinese and Chinese-Mexican populations at the beginning of the 20th century, during the time of the Mexican Revolution and as the U.S. enacted discriminatory policies against Asian immigrants. The anthropomorphic sculptures use scaled measurements of the La Chinesca basements as patterns. Mao thinks of these plans as not only as architectural duplications, but also as skins that provide structure and surface to pierce and modify. These sculptures present their own museography of ceramic, porcelain and calcite organs, organic gestures that operate as fragments of the human or animal body and speak to a deconstructed condition. The spaceship-like structures slips between the machine, the organic body, and the terrestrial. Mao equates the architectural form with the mythical body.
Fragmented: Yeni Mao by Michael Anthony Hall, office magazine, Feb 23, 2024
The 10 Best Booths at Frieze Los Angeles 2024, by Maxwell Rabb, Artsy, Mar 1, 2024
