Trevor Yeung Sees Love Through the Lives of Betta Fish
At Magician Space in Beijing, Trevor Yeung considers love and power through the life cycle of betta fighting fish. Zhu Ruihan reviews the show.
Exhibition view: Trevor Yeung, Not a Fighter, But a Lover, Magician Space, Beijing (15 November 2024–15 February 2025). Courtesy Magician Space.
For over a thousand years, ornamental fish have been kept as pets. It's a practice examined through an anthropomorphic lens in the latest exhibition at Magician Space, where Trevor Yeung has created a haunting, immersive environment spotlighting the industrial breeding and life cycle of betta fish or Betta splendens, a freshwater species native to Southeast Asia.
A sense of unease begins with the quasi-domestic installation that opens the show, titled Not a Fighter, But a Lover (15 November 2024–15 February 2025): ten fibreglass betta fish heads in a spectral gradient are mounted on metal rods at 45-degree angles along the wall. They resemble coat hooks or betta fish training wands, cute yet vaguely threatening with their weapon-like form.
The hooks point towards a contrastingly industrial-style room, partitioned into three areas by transparent and metal barriers. The brightly lit space is enhanced by white walls, glass vessels, metal objects, and mirrors, while the three sections, which each correspond to a stage or state in a betta fish's life—mating, growth, and display—are connected by a corridor running through the middle.
Yeung's exploration of the aquarium is profoundly tied to his upbringing and personal experiences. His 2015 work Live in Hong Kong, Born in Dongguan addresses the subject of national identity, and comprises tanks containing wild fish from Hong Kong, where the species are protected by law, and mainland China. In his recent presentation Courtyard of Attachments (2024) for Hong Kong in Venice, Yeung delved into the relationship between humans and aquatic systems, drawing from references that included his father's seafood restaurant, pet shops, feng shui, and the pet fish he kept as a child. At Magician Space, however, Yeung takes a step back from the personal to examine the operational logic of ornamental fish farming systems, expanding his ongoing exploration of emotion, desire, and power dynamics.
In the first section of the exhibition, the massive, pale-pink foam and silicone sofa bed Love Nest (2024) invites the viewer to sink into its soft 'bubbles'. Modelled after the bubble nests built by breeding bettas, the sofa delivers a cold sensation in the Beijing winter, refusing to comfort or provide warmth.
Enhancing this surreal scene are two photographs—The Betta Cuddle (Before) and The Betta Cuddle (After) (both 2024)—that capture a pair of betta fish under the shelter of bubble nests, tinted amber from the almond leaf extract which boosts betta breeding. Silhouetted against the light, the fishes' vibrant colours are concealed by uncanny, ink-like shadows, suggesting an interplay between vitality and mortality.
Breeders usually remove female fish after spawning, as they may be killed by males after laying eggs. Females are generally regarded as less beautiful than males, and those deemed unsuitable for breeding are frequently culled en masse; while the diverse and aesthetically desirable appearance of male bettas is the result of continuous selective breeding. Here Yeung's work asks, is the apparent protective gesture—to separate males and females—merely an illusion concealing those in power? How can the momentary intimacy of the 'cuddling' fish mask power dynamics? When instinctive behaviours of fighting and loving become mutually exclusive, does this deny the validity of either?
The second section of the show features fragile flooring made of thousands of glass bottles containing liquid almond leaf extract (This is our world, 2024). Such bottles are typically used to isolate and protect juvenile bettas once they become capable of fighting. When they reach maturity, selected fish are shipped to distant markets—a destiny represented in the display rack centred in the third part of the exhibition. Visitors are invited to walk across the flooring and feel the fish's vulnerability beneath their feet, with each step causing the bottles and their contents to rattle.
Resembling a temple or arena, the large-scale, curved display rack The Unentertaining Circle (2024) consists of compartmentalised micro-tanks filled with water that each face a mirrored surface. Such tanks are used to house solitary bettas, who 'fight' their own reflections until they are sold to buyers. While on the walls of the same room are upside-down replicas of betta tails. Yeung posits these tails as representative of selection criteria and value systems of our world; here, their enlarged size and overtly saturated tone might indicate neither aggression nor courtship, but rather rigidity, blood, or death.
Through playing with scale—from the outsized sofa to micro-ecosystems within glass bottles and reflective tanks—Yeung gradually overlaps narratives around the betta fish with the human condition, prompting the viewer to reconsider their place within an invisible power system. While humans use technology and tools to control nature and dispel loneliness, in doing so we may imprison ourselves within the very systems we build. In the industrial-scale breeding systems of betta fish, emotion and power intertwine. Yeung questions: are we the ones loving and breeding, or merely agents of the system doing so? —[O]