ARTIST: Zhu Yu

CURATOR: Dan Zhou

MOPENING: 2024.03.08, Fri, 14:00 – 18:00

DURATION: 2024.03.08 – 04.08, Tue-Sun, 11:00-18:00

ARTIST TALK: 2024.03.16, Sat, 14:00-16:00. HOST: Chen Hayan

INTRODUCTION : Chen Hayan

Editorial Note 

Zhu Yu isn’t afraid of employing comedic approaches and uses stimulating visual symbols and labelling elements such as ties, dog leashes, and acupuncture needles in her art pieces. She deconstructs the grand “portrait” through painting installation and intends to reveal potential contradictions, assumptions, and complex chains in artificial imagery. The artist utilises the confined space to narrow her distance from the viewer, producing a situation of mutual scrutiny. 

About the artist

Zhuyu (born 1981 in Liushi, Wenzhou) is a contemporary artist with a distinct personal style, whose work is deeply rooted in individual experience while acutely responding to broader social transformations. Her practice spans video, installation, photography, and painting, often employing the concept of “movable maps” as a metaphor to explore the fluid relationships between self and society, identity and space.

Zhuyu’s early experiences in an industrial environment have profoundly influenced her sensitivity to materials and her construction of visual language. From collecting discarded factory parts as a child to uncovering overlooked social realities in her art, she consistently focuses on the value of what is “marginal” and “hidden.” Her works serve not only as a reflection of personal memory but also as a critical engagement with the structures that shape collective experience.

In series such as Face & Faceless, Zhuyu uses a distinctive visual vocabulary to deconstruct the relationship between identity and power. By incorporating everyday symbols such as clothing and ties, she constructs images that intertwine the figurative and the abstract, highlighting how individuals are disciplined and regulated within social frameworks. Thefigures she portrays often hover between recognizability and obscurity, suggesting the precarious visibility of the individual within larger societal systems.

Zhuyu’s artistic language is inherently experimental, as she moves fluidly across different media to investigate how visual forms convey memory, time, and social dynamics. Her works embrace formal freedom while subtly embedding critical reflections on reality. Whether through spatial constructions or material choices, she remains consistently engaged with the theme of “movement”—both physical and conceptual—as a core inquiry.

As an artist in constant evolution, Zhuyu’s practice reflects a nuanced interrogation of identity and social mechanisms. Through micro-narratives, she reveals broader cultural and historical contexts, inviting audiences to move beyond surface interpretations. Her work does not offer passive visual experiences; rather, it constructs a speculative mode of viewing—one that bridges the personal and the public, the visible and the concealed.

WEBSITE : http://www.zuyu66.com