Minutes of Appearance

Minutes of Appearance is a mixed-media installation by Yao that translates the daily ritual of applying makeup into a physical accumulation of time and material. Over the course of one month, the artist applied one layer of paint made from expired cosmetic products to a mirror for every minute spent on her appearance, leaving the surface untouched only on days when no makeup was worn. As these layers build, the mirror’s traditional clarity dissolves into an opaque, fragmented record, transforming a tool of self-presentation into a site of perceptual ambiguity.