Trevor Yeung Explores the Poetic Life of Betta Fish in 'Not a Fighter, But a Lover'
On view at Magician Space in Beijing until February 25, 2025.
On Goldfish Street in Hong Kong, you can find rows of Betta fish dangling in small plastic bags, organized in neat, endless rows. Many of their journeys begin in Thailand, where they’re farmed in solitude and shipped across the world. Raised for display, these creatures embody a paradox of hostility and beauty, where their inability to coexist with one another is dually defined by their nature and their involuntary confinement.
This delicate tension is at the heart of Trevor Yeung’s latest solo exhibition, now on view at Magician Space in Beijing until February 25, 2025. Known for his mixed-media works that often consist of plants and animals, Yeung examines closed systems that dictate behavior and emotion, revealing the artifice of human relations.
In Not a Fighter, But a Lover, the artist turns his attention to male fighting fish, better known as Bettas, chronicling their lives from birth to display. The journey opens with “Love Nest,” a pale pink haven of bubbles where the fish lay eggs, meanwhile “This is Our World” presents a mesh of thousands of glass bottles, each representing the beginnings of a solitary life. The exhibition ends with the curved “gladiatorial shelf of tanks” of “The Unentertaining Circle,” where the creatures parade their beauty for the gaze of others and themselves.
In the age of Instagram, the exhibition draws a poignant parallel between the Bettas’ performative existence and our own. Through iridescent blooms of tails and severed heads on long, steel hooks, Yeung calls these systems into question and considers whether the same structures that isolate us might also reveal a universal desire to be seen, even when we’re alone.
Magician Space
798 Art Zone, 2 Jiuxianqiao Road,
Chaoyang District,
100015 Beijing, China
