Yue is best known for his self-portrait paintings. Here he casts himself with his trademark wide-mouthed, laughing face. Referencing the utopian propaganda of earlier Chinese Social realist paintings, his work creates allegories critical of the Chinese government in works that are humorously laced with cynicism.
Mindlessly happy in their uniformity, Yue's soldier cum citizens of this absurd army recall the famed terra-cotta warriors from Xian (some of which are now on show at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore).. Rather than the serious visages of the warriors, however, these figures convey ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.’”