Video director and artist Agusta Yr creates virtual, 3D worlds where life never loses its sheen. Below is her interview in Mission’s Human issue.
“What if you were the only person in the world?” Agusta Yr ponders as she recounts her childhood memories of reading a Swedish book about a little boy who wished he was the only person on Earth. Then, one day, he wakes up and he’s the only one there. “I was thinking that would be so much fun,” Yr says. “And if he was multiplied, then he wouldn’t need anyone else.”
Creating surreal images and digital artwork has been a way for the Iceland-born, Florida-raised Yr to meld her life experiences with the virtual worlds she envisions. Also known as @iceicebabyspice through her Instagram account, she was living in a bubble of her own creation way before 2020 made it fashionable (and necessary). “I started doing self-portraiture in school, and this idea of self-obsession kind of happened,” she says. “I’ve always loved the idea of being able to multiply yourself.” This combination inspired her work on multiples, based on the philosophy that if you can multiply yourself, you don’t really need anyone else.
Yr spoke with Mission from her London flat, the city that has been her home for the past 2½ years. Not sure what to do career-wise, she started off studying photography, “and got so extremely bored with it.” However, she found more satisfaction once she began to experiment with video and moving imagery. “I feel like my work is weird and crazy,” she says. When she discovered how to make video in 3D, she knew she had finally landed on what she wanted to do. She then took a class in photogrammetry, for which you take 400 photographs of the subject, scan them and then upload them to a computer. She feels that scanning “keeps people’s personalities… it’s always a little wonky.” This particular aesthetic is her signature look. “I love the way it looks,” she says. “It fits perfectly into my universe of weird slimy vibes.”
In fact, Yr has become known for taking this one step further and turning people into plastic. “For me, that’s more of an aesthetic thing,” she says. “I love anything shiny and plastic—it’s just what I’m drawn to.” This is most evident in the work she did for Moschino’s presentation of its SS20 collection, in which the models were transported to a virtual 3D world. “I love how, in 3D spaces, the light hits the shine and plastic on the people.”
The Moschino collaboration is a great example of this aesthetic and started taking shape after Yr discovered that the collection had been inspired by works by Picasso. “I wanted to scan [the models] and make them look like they were made of porcelain and put them in this void kind of space,” she says. “It was open-ended at the sides and had this kind of weird floor and ceiling structures. I wanted to focus on the clothes because they were so amazing.” Yr’s finishing touch was to make it appear like all the models were inside a dollhouse.
While the pandemic has not had an impact on the volume of work that she has, there have certainly been limitations that she has had to adjust to. “I think I’m mainly just going with the flow with my work,” she says. Scanning is not really possible right now, she confirms, so she has had to get creative in order to bring her creations to life. “There was a video that I did with Vogue Italia with Gucci—I already had three heads scanned for three models and I put them on different bodies.”
The majority of the work that Yr has produced recently has been commissioned and had a commercial twist. “The only thing that I’ve been making for myself in the past few years is my Instagram, and that is me just having fun. It’s just a place where I can do whatever I want.” And if you go down that rabbit hole with her, you’ll find yourself in the space where Yr is the only girl in the world. “To be happy in life… [you need to be] happy with yourself and your own best friend, your own partner,” she shares. It’s the philosophy she lives by. You are the only one who can make yourself happy: it’s about working on yourself.
Images courtesy of Agusta Yr
