Yugen, refers to a concept in Japanese aesthetics which alludes to a deep awareness of the universe. Yugen is also the title chosen by Martha Fiennes, artist and director, for her latest creative project: a moving image artwork which combines Fiennes’ considerable knowledge of filmmaking and cutting edge generative coding technology. In Yugen, Salma Hayek is Fiennes’ muse and inspiration. It is she who dominates the screen.
Martha Fiennes, award-winning film-director Onegin (1999) and Chromophobia (2007) brings to her art a substantial experience of film directing and cutting-edge post production technologies. Fiennes combines intricate coded algorithms to create majestic moving images which perpetually self- generate in a continuous and non-predictable cycle. This radical new medium is branded as SLOimage and was developed by Martha and Pete Muggleston in her debut work Nativity, 2011.

In this moving image artwork, Salma Hayek is immortalised to become an ever-evolving archetype or emanation “a kind of high priestess shaman” who dominates a world of expanded realities, whilst inhabiting dramatic fictional landscapes and dynamic, majestic fractal environments. The viewer ‘travels’ between these varying spaces, at the behest of arbitrary decisions driven by the coding technology within this groundbreaking media.