Whitney Biennial 2017

Floor 5

Born 1971 in Seoul, South Korea
Lives in Queens, NY

Anicka Yi’s 3D film The Flavor Genome explores perception and the ways in which it can be altered and formed through sensory experiences. It is centered on a prospecting mission in the Brazilian Amazon: a hunt for a mythical plant prized for its medicinal properties, described only in terms of its desirability and elusiveness. The plant is thus imagined as a trophy for the pharmaceutical industry and a screen for colonialist projections onto the rainforest.

The film’s protagonist is a “flavor chemist,” a figure who symbolizes a breakdown between the natural and artificial, in direct contrast to the synthesized, hybrid organisms she seeks in one of the film’s several storylines. Yi’s film considers a rich set of concerns, including new developments in both genetic engineering and biotechnology, imperialist exploitation, and the way that cross-pollinated forms—repulsive but perhaps inevitable—permeate contemporary life, culture, and science.