ARTEMIS LYU
ARTEMIS LYU is a Shanghai-born extreme sports athlete and interdisciplinary artist from the ’90s, currently based in New York.
Her work spans abstract painting using watercolor, acrylic, and pastels, as well as installations and weaving with handmade paper, wool, cotton, discarded materials, and stones. She also explores multimedia works, including video.
Having been educated in multilingual and multicultural environments across China, Japan, and the United States, her artistic style blends the harmony and subtlety emphasized in Eastern aesthetics with the rationality, order, and proportion valued in Western aesthetics. Her practice has evolved from figurative to abstract, with a strong emphasis on rich and vibrant colors that express emotion and energy. She meticulously explores texture and surface detail while capturing dreamlike and utopian visual experiences.
As an extreme sports enthusiast and cave diver, her work is deeply influenced by experiences of pushing limits, confronting uncertainty, and existing on the edge. These experiences heighten her focus on themes of fragility and fleeting moments, exploring the brief instants between survival and the unknown of death. Through dynamic lines, vibrant colors, and fluid forms, she conveys themes of self-transcendence and embracing uncertainty. She integrates natural elements such as plants and oceans with everyday objects and artificial materials, reflecting the intricate relationship between human life and natural forces, constructing a surreal and immersive narrative space.
Pursuing an MFA in Art Practice at SVA has provided her with opportunities to experiment with new media and expand her artistic exploration.
EDUCATION
2024 till now MFA Art Practice, School of Visual Arts. New York, NY, United States.2014 Japanese Culture Program, Knagawa University. Yokohama, Japan.2012 Japanese Language And literature, Shanghai Normal University. Shanghai, China.
VIDEO
——“The Curse of Ascent” and “The Death Drive”
By
Artemis
Lyu
“The Curse of Ascent”
The concept of “The Curse of Ascent” originates from a dark anime I watched called Made in Abyss. Its core premise involves adventurers exploring a seemingly bottomless chasm known as the Abyss. While descending into the Abyss is effortless, attempting to ascend back to the surface triggers the “Curse of Ascent.” The effects range from mild symptoms such as dizziness and vomiting to severe outcomes like bleeding from all orifices, death, or even grotesque transformation into non-human forms. This premise reminds me of the striking similarities with decompression diving.
In the documentary (about cave diving) Dave Not Coming Back, Dave took only 11 minutes to descend to a depth of 270 meters (885 feet) at the bottom of an underwater cave. At such depths, every minute spent increases the required decompression time by an hour on the return journey. If a dive plan encounters any delays or errors, the necessary decompression stops can quickly balloon into an impossible figure. Even for scuba divers equipped to breathe underwater, at extreme depths like the 270 meters documented, the very gases they rely on become potential killers: oxygen turns toxic, nitrogen clouds judgment like drunkenness, helium disrupts the nervous system and can cause seizures, and high levels of carbon dioxide in closed-circuit rebreathers (CCR) can induce suffocation or unconsciousness.
Even with precise dive planning and strict control of decompression stops, the “Curse of Ascent”—decompression sickness—remains a constant threat. In the documentary, Dave’s friend Don attempted an emergency ascent after failing to rescue Dave. During his ascent, a helium bubble formed in his left ear, disrupting his balance and rendering him unable to control buoyancy or depth. He described the sensation as though the entire cave were spinning like a washing machine. For nearly 12 hours of decompression stops, he experienced uncontrollable dry heaving, was too weak to breathe autonomously, and had to manually press his regulator’s purge button to push air into his throat, consciously managing each inhale, hold, and exhale. After finally being rescued, Don was rushed to a decompression chamber within 22 minutes, undergoing seven hours of treatment, followed by ten more sessions totaling 27 hours over the next two weeks. He couldn’t walk or think clearly for over a month, and the helium bubble permanently damaged his sense of balance.
Don survived, but his friend Dave remained in the depths of the cave. Support divers at various depths relayed messages written on a slate, and I can only imagine Don’s emotions as he wrote, “Dave’s not coming back.” Dave hadn’t been missing for long, but the time spent at lethal depths meant he had likely lost consciousness or died, with no resources or time remaining to safely decompress and return alive.
“The Death Drive”
When discussing romantic fatalism, the psychological and philosophical concept of the “death drive” often comes to mind. Whether rooted in a self-destructive tendency or a primal yearning for life to return to its origin, the “death drive” is always ambiguous and counterintuitive. Occasionally, people describe feeling this drive when faced with environments far greater than themselves—like immense cliffs or the infinite ocean depths—a pull that seemingly defies the instinct for survival.
Elite divers, striving to push limits and explore broader possibilities, are often misunderstood by the general public, who deem their actions “reckless,” “irresponsible,” or “foolhardy.” Yet sometimes, I feel I understand their motivations. When confronted with the profound majesty of the deep sea, stirred by an intense love and the “death drive,” we are all so insignificantly small.
Through the interplay of light and darkness, I sought to evoke an exploration of negative space. “The unlit darkness within the cave acts as a negative space, symbolizing the unreachable forces of the subconscious, spaces of invisible fear, and unresolved emotions.” This approach aims to guide viewers toward experiencing the hidden knots and veiled feelings within their own inner worlds.
As inscribed at the gates of Hell in Dante’s Inferno, the first part of The Divine Comedy:
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
We Are All Grands of Sand
By
Artemis
Lyu
In August 2018, Richard Russell, an airport ground crew member in the U.S., stole a parked commercial aircraft after finishing his routine shift. He was 29 years old. With no formal flight training, he took the plane into the sky, relying only on the limited skills he had learned from video games. He performed a series of daring maneuvers before the aircraft crashed on an uninhabited island near Seattle 75 minutes later. No one else was harmed. His conversation with air traffic control was recorded, in which he described himself as “just a broken guy, got a few screws loose”, and admitted, “I wouldn’t know how to land it. I wasn’t really planning on landing it.”
Beginning with the story of a victim of industrial society, this video constructs a visually balanced and aesthetically composed narrative through a tripartite framing: the sterile white backdrop of a biological laboratory image, encased within a black frame of outer space, further enclosed by a middle-toned gray edit. This elegant structure introduces the audience to my expansive concept of the universe and lived experience, as well as a sense of “rage against the fading light.” It aims to convey a vastness that transcends death, shifting from the microscopic to the cosmic.
Order and meaning serve as the measures by which society moves forward, while derailment and meaninglessness ignite the spark of carbon-based life.