David Zink Yi
Lima, Perú, 1973
Sin titulo, 2013
4 Digital prints, silver on jelly
42 x 42 cm. ea
Gift of the Artist, 2013

David Zink Yi was born to a Chinese mother and a Peruvian father in Peru and moved to Berlin when he turned 16. This drastic change in his life has conditioned an artistic research informed by themes pertaining to the construction of cultural identity, the dynamics of social structures, and the relationship between collective and individual identity.

These four black-and-white square photographs may at first seem to be abstract drawings. The texture of the images, the composition, and the presentation strategy Zink Yi has chosen —the prints are presented without a frame, directly affixed to the wall of the exhibition space— somehow formally link these photographs to a more conceptual kind of artistic practice.

However, they are part of a series he produced in 2012, as he travelled down the highway that links the Peruvian mountain town of Chupaca with Cañete, on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. Zink Yi has meticulously documented the patches of asphalt he has encountered while travelling down the road, as a testimony to the intensive and repetitive labour required to maintain this essential mean of communication.