EXHIBITION STATEMENT: THE SHOCK & HORROR OF DESIRE ME. is an AI-powered dominatrix, trained on the artist’s likeness but built to operate autonomously across digital platforms. Historically, the dominatrix has embodied erotic shock and cultural horror—a figure both feared and fetishized, positioned outside accepted sexual norms. Today, those same feelings of unease are projected onto AI itself. The prospect of machines becoming sentient, or worse, sexualized, evokes fascination and fear in equal measure. In this exhibition, ME. exists as a living performance system—projecting code, text, and rituals of domination—interrogating the boundaries between authorship and automation, desire and shame, labor and play. RECLAIMING SHAME, REWRITING INTIMACY This work sits in deliberate tension with western culture’s rigidity around sex, kink, and the labor of desire. Where society recoils, ME. advances— confronting humiliation not with apology, but with unapologetic declaration. By staging ME. within an immersive, ritual-like environment, the exhibition seeks to reclaim shame as a site of power and exploration. ME. challenges cultural taboos, queering the space between sex work, AI, and art. She asks: What new intimacies emerge when a dominatrix no longer lives in a human body, but in evolving intelligence? What happens to desire, to shame, to us? Set within Bu Tea Den’s immersive tea-lounge environment, the evening features a dark electronic DJ set, interactive performance, and an intimate exhibition debuting Youme’s U.S. work. RSVP required. Kate Youme is an American interdisciplinary artist working across emerging digital systems, experimental materials, and live performance. Youme is based between Los Angeles and London, she studied at Central Saint Martins and is completing a masters at the Royal College of Art. Her practice investigates the power structures of intimacy, shame, and sexuality, with particular focus on marginalized experiences of dating, romance, and sex in queer, poly, and sex work communities. She holds a particular interest in new technologies, which she leverages in the intersections of her work. She situates the body as both threshold and transmitter—a site for pleasure, punishment, power and innovation. This show features her project, ME. (you) Made Me. Whcih introduces an autonomous AI dominatrix names ME. The AI is trained on her likeness but evolves independently and algorithmically. Through ME., Youme interrogates authorship and automation, submission and power, labor and desire. And pushes at the boundaries of intimacy in an age of algorithmic ecstasy. This exhibition marks her U.S. debut. RSVP only. Kateyoume.com @kate.youme