Man Yu

The last work of the Human Suit circuit, executed on August 30, 2019, earned considerable media attention. The performance/happening I'm Not This Suit involved around 100 naked people, as commentary on the stigmas and social conditioning of the burdens ("trajines" in spanish) that each person lives with in their human suits. The performance was the first massive public artistic nude in the Central American region.

Man Yu was part of the team that won the award for best short film at the 2019 European International Film Festival, for No. 77873B. Her work was declared by the Costa Rican government to be of national cultural interest. She represented Costa Rica at the Beijing International Art Biennale of 2017 and the Latin American Art Festival in Beijing in 2019. In 2019, she was selected to represent Costa Rica in a series of official China Post commemorative envelopes.

This collection was exhibited for the first time in 2016 as a solo exhibition in the 1887 Gallery of the National Center for Culture in Costa Rica. This was Man Yu's first exhibition experience and she opened the exhibition as a Chinese festival with food and lion dancing. The pieces in the collection were also exhibited at the Confucius Institute in Costa Rica.

Inspired by a childhood painting, Man Yu decided to start a new series of works, Traje Humano (Human Suit). The multimedia series includes 28 works painted between 2013 and 2019 (added to her original 1987 painting from childhood), two installations, and several multidisciplinary artistic collaborations that involved video, performance, fashion design, videomapping and happenings with 33 other artists from various disciplines. Her collaborators included video artists, dancers, musicians, and fashion designers.

By 2005, Man Yu had completed her first collection of works, titled Women of the Orient, with 10 large-format works in pastel that referred to the symbolism, color, and mysticism of Asian culture, and specifically exemplification of Asian women. In addition to approach the aesthetic from figurativism, concepts such as motherhood, nostalgia, marriage and women in general are addressed too. The series combines Japanese geishas and Chinese operas with Man Yu's explicit purpose of reflecting that despite the insistence of the Japanese and Chinese people to differentiate themselves and not be confused together, the essence of femininity in their traditions and allegorical aesthetics are similar and projected to the West where they are received with the same cultural perception.

Man Yu later enrolled in Veritas University to study advertising design. However, she discontinued studies in 1999 when she became pregnant at the age of 21. After experiencing a number of life stressors, Man Yu returned to the practice of art. She studied under Nelly Eyo, an Argentine artist, exploring painting, pastel, and the human figure. She also was a student of Julio Escámez [es] for several years, learning about oil painting in his workshop.

Man Yu Fung Li (born February 19, 1978), commonly known as Man Yu, is a Costa Rican artist, born in Hong Kong. She specializes in painting, but also incorporates multiple multidisciplinary media such as installation art, video art and performance art. Part of her work focuses on human anatomy, the different non-physical layers of the human being, humanism and respect for living beings.

Man Yu was born in Kowloon City, Hong Kong, on February 19, 1978. She is the daughter of Pik Luen Li Kan and Tak Fu Fung Ng, who fought in World War II. The family immigrated to Costa Rica, which Man Yu's father selected because of its lack of army.