FUTURES x Magnum Artist Spotlight: Sheung Yiu
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FUTURES & Magnum Photos invite you to join us for our next online Artist Spotlight with Sheung Yiu.
For this talk, Sheung Yiu will present his ongoing project (Inter)Faces of Predictions, or How To Read a Face.
Across Eastern and Western cultures, societies have developed ways to predict a person’s character through facial features. In East Asian cultures, the esoteric practice of face-reading promises the power to see into one’s future through facial analysis. Though face reading remains largely a folk belief, many continue to seek the occult power of predictions from face readers. In the West, the forgotten pseudo-science of physiognomy, combined with statistics and machine learning, re-enters our modern lives as facial recognition algorithms, perpetuating societal biases and individual prejudices.
In this project, Sheung Yiu blends the visual language of the occult in face reading with the “scientific” aesthetic of facial recognition to blur the lines between these practices from the East and West. This visual study reveals the similarities between the two predictive regimes centered around the face: one remains folklore, while the other is extensively applied to almost every aspect of our daily lives. The project challenges the automation bias of facial recognition (or what he calls “Western face reading”) and unveils the deeper, often unexamined belief system underlying these practices.
About FUTURES x Magnum Artist Spotlight:
Every two months, we invite a photographer from the FUTURES platform to join us for an engaging online conversation about their artistic journey. Thanks to the online format, these talks are accessible to audiences around the world, offering a rare opportunity to hear directly from emerging artists about their work, motivations, and creative processes.
This series also aims to inspire the next generation of photographers by connecting them with practitioners who are still in the early stages of their careers—offering valuable insights and inspiration for others navigating similar paths.
Free – Registration required by following this link
© Sheung Yiu