When Men Become Muses: Yushi Li's Subversive Artistry

Chinese photographer Yushi Li is known for her photographs of men through a gender-neutral gaze. Li wants to subvert the male gaze. In doing so, she recognizes that alternative gazes include every gender in the spectrum. In an interview with Central News Network (CNN), she outlines how today’s gaze also comprises those of artificial intelligence, algorithms and many more 'non-human eyes'.

To subvert the male gaze, men in Li’s photographs are free to be as they are, whether emotionally, mentally, or physically. They are not pressured to conform to society’s standards of masculinity, one that has traditionally called for sculpted bodies and emotional unavailability. Here, Li’s photographs give her sitters a moment of respite. They show them that an alternative way of life exists — one where they can choose to be free from the mental, physical, and emotional constraints of the patriarchy. Li’s photographs are tools to expose how the patriarchy and its strict gender norms harm everyone regardless of their gender, everyone including the men who benefit from the system. Li’s photographs are deeply intertwined with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Gender Equality and Good Health And Well-Being.

Yushi Li began her exploration of gender-neutral gazes with one of her earlier series, My Tinder Boys. In this series, she photographs men she has met through the popular dating app in the nude. The men do mundane everyday tasks such as eating breakfast and doing their laundry, and they do it comfortably and nonchalantly despite being naked. For Li, the series is a subversion of the historically objectifying lens that photographers who are men have imposed onto women. This lens had flooded the history of photography with women’s naked bodies and created an apparent lack of nudes of people who were not categorically femme. Hence, she created a series of subversive photographs that instead showed men as her objects of desire for love and lust.

However, it was widely misconstrued that a gay man made My Tinder Boys, so Li created her next series, Your Reservation Is Confirmed. Here, she began inserting herself into the photographs, fully clothed and often looking directly at the camera. In these pictures, she consistently asserts her gaze and her power. The relationship she shares with her male models in this series is interesting as well. These subjects either look at her or the camera, also asserting their agency through the image. This is Yushi Li’s vision of equality, shared through an equilibrium of power as determined by her subject’s gazes.

In her most recent series, Paintings, Dreams and Love, Li experiments by imposing this signature parity of gaze into paintings from art history. For example, in her piece titled The Dream of the Fisherwoman, she reinterprets Hokusai’s Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife. A man in her photograph has replaced the woman in the original painting. The picture is also not as erotically charged as the original painting. Here, desire is subtle; there is more love and reverence than lust. 

Yushi Li's photography challenges traditional gender norms by offering a gender-neutral gaze, allowing men to express vulnerability and complexity beyond societal expectations. Her work, from My Tinder Boys to Paintings, Dreams and Love, subverts the archetypal male gaze and presents an equilibrium of power and desire, providing a fresh perspective on gender and identity. By capturing men in states of emotional openness and everyday life, Li highlights the damaging effects of patriarchal standards on all genders. Her thought-provoking images contribute to the discourse on gender equality and mental well-being, making her work relevant to global conversations on these crucial issues.

Discover more about photographs by Yushi Li and her other initiatives by visiting her Instagram @yushilii.