Yukai Chen
The Factory of Desire
2025 En Foco Fellowship Exhibition
Nov 5 - 28, 2026
The Factory of Desire explores queer identity, belonging, and cultural inheritance through self-portraits and staged photographs. Drawing on the artist’s upbringing in a rural village within a religious yet rapidly modernizing city in southeastern China, the series transforms personal experiences of displacement into constructed queer spaces.
Growing up with limited queer representation, the artist found refuge online, where anonymity offered opportunities to explore identities that remained concealed in everyday life. This tension between private desire and public constraint informs the work. Vibrant plastics and mass-produced pop culture materials familiar to rural Chinese life become elements of staged compositions, giving visual form to queer narratives often left unrepresented.
The project also reflects an ambivalent relationship with home. A longing to escape the village’s conservatism gave way to grief following its demolition. Among the artist’s enduring memories is a temple visit with family: a woman wearing pink makeup and male attire sang boldly in an opera performance. During an adolescence marked by bodily estrangement, her presence offered solace and a glimpse of possibility.
Through photography, the artist revisits these experiences, recognizing the culture once associated with constraint as an inheritance that also holds resources for queer expression.
Zoom Artist Talk
Thu, Nov 12, 5:30 PM (PT)
Yukai Chen (Chinese, b. 1999, he/they) is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Working across staged photography, documentary photography, and archival research, Chen explores queer spaces and collective memory. Chen’s work has been featured in DAZED, The Boston Globe, and PhMuseum. Chen is a recipient of the NYSCA Support for Artists Award, En Foco Fellowship, and Brooklyn Art Fund.
En Foco, Inc. is a non-profit that supports U.S. based photographers of African, Asian, Latino, Native American, and Pacific Islander heritage. Founded in 1974, En Foco makes their work visible to the art world, yet remains accessible to under-served communities. Through exhibitions, workshops, events, and publications, it provides professional recognition, honoraria, and assistance to photographers as they grow into different stages of their careers.