This work involves an extremely believable doppelgänger acting as a full proxy for the artist, Kate Youme. Mannerisms, voice, posture, clothing, physicality, and persona are replicated exactly. The doppelgänger attends exhibitions and public events internationally, featuring work by Kate Youme. To the art-goer, this person is Kate Youme. The only difference from the real artist is that this person is a man.

The artwork exists only in the encounter. At any given moment, only two bodies fully participate: the art-goer and the proxy. Everyone else in the room is a witness to something they cannot hear, cannot measure, and cannot retrieve. The work is not an object, or an archive. It is a living encounter. It is a work that lives inside the moment of contact.

While gender identity can be lived fluidly and with choice, gendered perception arrives instantly. The body is read before consent is given. This work operates there. In the space before conversation. In that space that is assumption. Like ME (You?) Better Now, is a work about reaction time. It does not ask questions rhetorically. But forces people to answer, to feel immediately.

The doppelgänger is the vessel of the work. The male body is the living archive of every reaction, projection, desire, respect, discomfort, and misrecognition. He is the only complete record. He is the only expert witness. He is the only one who will ever fully experience the totality of the artwork. In this sense, the artwork observes itself.

Through this work, Kate Youme asks:

Will they Like ME (You?) Better Now?
Will they like the work better now?
Will they like themselves better now.. when the body of the mirror is this rather than that?
And what does it reveal, when they do?