The idea for “Fancy House,” came from Yao’s childhood memories of a fake Persian rug that covered the floor of her family’s traditional tatami room.

“I thought it was kind of odd,” said the artist, who painted the patterns on each tatami to represent the emergence of European fashion into Japanese tradition. “For westerners, Per­sian rugs are viewed as Oriental or Eastern rugs. For the Japanese, it’s a European rug.”

The use of pastel pink signifies mass-produced products like “fancy goods,” as Yao refers to Hello Kitty, Japanese comics and “other cute mascot things.” The col­ors are best described as infantile, representing Japanese women’s fan­tasies of staying forever young and cute.

Yao’s video installation of making flower bouquets reveals how rose and tulip buds are severed from their stems. Each one is then pierced with a wire that helps them retain their perfect shape and slows their wilting process. For Yao, these buds are a metaphor for innocence, purity and virginity.

In “Forever Bud,” Yao again tackles the idea of piercing a flower bud with wire to preserve the flower’s perfect shape. She also draws on her own curi­osity about how women idealize about marriage as a happy ending.

“Since I was little, I never really had that fantasy,” said Yao, who is now mar­ried and living in Los Angeles. “I was curious how people make that fantasy although, in reality, Japan is still a patriar­chal society. I couldn’t think of marriage as a happy ending because I didn’t have a very good impression of it in my life when I was younger.”

With parents who di­vorced before she finished high school and a feeling of disconnect from soci­ety and her family at an early age, Yao was eager to leave Japan, which is what brought her to the United States in 2000.

In Yao’s sequential photographs of a wedding bouquet, the initial image shows flowers that are so fresh there are still water droplets on the delicate, closed buds. The contrast­ing final image is one of the flowers, closed and wilted.

“Those wired, perfectly shaped buds wilt without ever opening or blossom­ing,” said Yao. “It represents how soci­ety expects women to be innocent, pure and virginal, and to die that way.”

Yao today uses art to free herself from the ideas of gender, race and sexuality that are instilled in individu­als by society. Using experiments in contrasting traditions, subcultures, race, genders and sexuality, she challenges those preconceived notions.

“Now I’m more interested in know­ing why Japanese or Asian culture and western culture are different,” she said. “I like introducing those ideas to others since nothing in the world is now unin­fluenced. Everything is merging.”
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“Cuties” runs March 24 through April 20 at the Los Angeles Art As­sociation/Gallery 825, 825 N. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles. Open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call (310) 652-8272.