Ambiguous Skate Nation



Ambiguous Skate Nation is an interactive installation made of around 200 hand-cut stickers.

Freely available to the visitors to be picked out of a pile and be glued on the gallery wall — a web-looking network naturally starts to form as the visitors enter and contribute to a collective collage of a continuously growing image bank.

Accumulated pictures, logos of existing brands, YouTube comments screenshots, made up slogans and modified found imagery found online and in archives showcase a humorous and dark side of skateboarding where, its history, visual identity relate to gender, sexuality and self-expression shifts to a new momentum made possible by the non-traditional skateboarders and queer skateboarding communities.

The sticker as a medium has always been rooted in the history of skateboarding and other anarchist or revolutionary subcultures. In this installation, YLÏAM makes use of this medium to involve the viewer in playful way to display powerful and humorous messages that first seem to be small of scale, but grow bigger when time passes.  


Ambiguous Skate Nation
2022
Installation, stickers
Variable dimensions                




I was invited by my friend Ian Waelder with whom I shared the exhibition room.
This was for SKaTeWeeK, a week-long festival to celebrate the culture of skateboarding. Open skate sessions, contests, exhibitions, video premieres and parties all over the city. SKTWK is a canvas for skateboarders, artists, photographers, film-makers, skate brands and skate-video-crews. It is a festival to come together, skate, enjoy the show(s) and make friends. SKTWK has been held 2018 and 2019 in Düsseldorf, 2022 and 2023 in Frankfurt am Main, 2024 and 2025 in Stuttgart.