The Paintings, sculptures and installations of Yue Minjun always feature uniform laughing faces. And if these laughing faces are observed carefully, it will be noticed that these faces are the face of Yue Minjun. With these formations of self portraits, Yue Minjun presents various realities that emerge as the background behind the laughing visages. These realities emerge through various easy to recognize symbols, metaphors and signs,
or through depictions of daily life.

The laughing faces and the representations of reality in Yue Minjun’s works are closely related. And this relationship shows Yue Minjun’s fairly easy to read cynicism in confrontation with reality. Concerning this cynisism, Yue Minjun has commented that he has commented that he senses an unrecognized power whose center is unknown, but which can engineer/manipulate the behavior of human being through intimidation and terror. This power constitutes a kind of violence that can make human behavior change progressively

Can the works of Yue Minjun be said to be self-portraits?
Doesm his artwork present any insight into the conflict between individuality
And collectivism? Does his work indicate self-identification that represents the pressing of the self-identity into
a collective existence? Of the many questions that arise, this is
The mose basic: Can the meaning of Yue Minjun’s self-portraits be categorized as auratic or post-auratic

Within the development of modern art, the search for reality through representation has been fully deter-mined
by the relationship between the individual absolute and reality.
As being in a set position, concepts within this definition is fully determined by the correspondence of the concept with the object, and is not influenced by any force outside of the correspondence.

The search for reality within contemporary art exhibits a contrary tendency. The individual no longer develops
a concept of reality because the position of the individual is no longer set and central, but rather without a center (ex-centric) or without a fixed central point. At the same time, the field/plain of interpretation or definition within the search for the meaning of reality continuously experiences reconfiguration. Because of that, the individual becomes unimportant in contemporary art. The question, “who are you?” within a contemporary work of art is
a polyphonous enquiry, or a question that looks both inwardly and outwardly.

“I” within the question “Who am I?” exists at a shifting position that is sometimes on the inside looking out and sometimes on outside looking in. This is a self-identification in which the self is temporary in nature. Varies forces outside and within the self continuously influence self-idenyWfication and cause its reconfiguration. This is true of the self-identification occurring in the works of Yue Minjun, which is reflected in the tendency toward producing self-portraits.