Guanyu Xu
Freedoms Are on the Margins, 2019/2021

Archival pigment print, 40 x 50 inches
Edition 1/5 + 2AP, signed, on label
Unframed
Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery
Estimated value: $5,000

In "Temporarily Censored Home" I covertly situate photographs in my teenage home in Beijing to queer the normativity of my parents' heterosexual space. These images taken in the past four years consist of portraits of me and other gay men in their domestic settings from my project "One Land to Another"; prints of my artwork made in the US; photographs of landscapes and built environments taken in the United States, Europe, and China; torn pages from film and fashion magazines that I collected as a teenager; and images from my family photo albums.

Through positioning, layering, and recontextualizing images, I aim to juxtapose, contradict, and collapse space and time, disrupting my teenage home. It bridges the relationship between personal and political in the context of the oppressive systems of both China and the US. Even though these installations were not permanent, I reclaimed my home in Beijing as a queer space of freedom and temporary protest.

About the Artist:
Guanyu Xu

徐冠宇 Guanyu Xu (b.1993, Beijing) is an artist currently based in Chicago and a lecturer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the winner of the Hyères International Festival (2020), PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai Exposure Award (2020), Philadelphia Photo Arts Center Annual Competition (2019), Lensculture Emerging Talent Award (2019), and Kodak Film Photo Award (2019). He has received artist residencies including ACRE (Chicago), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), and Light Work (Syracuse, NY).

His works have been exhibited and screened internationally, including at the Aperture Foundation and ICP Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; New Orleans Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; 36th Kasseler Dokfest, Germany; and others. His work can be found in public collections including Art Institute of Chicago and Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and New Orleans Museum of Art.

His works have been featured in numerous publications, including The New York Times, ArtAsiaPacific, The New Yorker, W Magazine, Harper's Magazine, Musée Magazine, Dazed China, Der Greif, and China Photographic Publishing House.

Website: xuguanyu.com | yanceyrichardson.com
Instagram: @xuguanyu | @yanceyrichardsongallery
Venmo: @guanyu-xu