Yua Ye
The Fold of Light interprets the fold as a continuous condition in which interior and exterior, visibility and concealment, compression and expansion repeatedly exchange places. A nacre-like membrane emerges from darkness, opens, turns inward, and reveals iridescent layers before folding back into shadow. Rather than reaching a fixed form, the image remains in a cycle of transformation, where each return is similar but never identical.
The work was developed through arts-based research into Korean mother-of-pearl, black lacquer, structural colour, digital memory, and generative image systems. AI was used as a collaborative method for producing and comparing variations, while the artist selected, refined, sequenced, and transformed the generated forms into a 25-second seamless loop. Each state carries visual traces of the previous one, allowing memory to persist through metamorphosis.
By linking the layered materiality of nacre with generative transformation, the work considers matter, perception, memory, and technology as folded together within one continuous surface.
