PIXY LIAO: RELATIONSHIP MATERIAL, CURATOR'S TOUR
with Yechen Zhao
Date: September 19th, 2025
Time: 10:00 – 11:00 AM CT
Cost: FREE, RSVP Required
Location: Art Institute of Chicago | 111 S Michigan Ave
Tour the Art Institute's current exhibition, Pixy Liao: Relationship Material, with exhibition curator Yechen Zhao.
Since 2007, Pixy Liao (廖逸君) has collaborated with her partner, Takahiro Morooka (諸岡高裕, nicknamed Moro), on a series of staged, often humorous self-portraits. These works wryly examine the power dynamics between artist and muse, prod at conservative gender roles, and document the evolution of their relationship.
Presenting approximately 45 works that span the duration of this ongoing series, Pixy Liao: Relationship Material—the artist’s first exhibition in Chicago—celebrates the couple’s many ways of being and working together. As the title suggests, the show frames Pixy’s relationship with Moro as artistic material in itself, showing how this manifests not only in photographs but also in sculptures, videos, and PIMO. Through these works, Pixy chronicles and enacts efforts to “reach a new equilibrium” in a partnership that is both artistic and romantic, examining questions of fantasy, desire, and control.
This tour is limited to 15 people, please email erin@filterphoto.org RSVP and reserve your spot.
Yechen Zhao (he/him) is the assistant curator of Photography and Media at the Art Institute of Chicago. He specializes in twentieth-century American photography and East Asian photography during the Cold War and its aftermath. He has served as a visiting critic for the Yale School of Art, and his writing has appeared in History of Photography and Aperture. He received his PhD in art history from Stanford University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Yale University Art Gallery.