Guanyu Xu

Guanya Xu
Boston Custom #4 (Shadow in the Bardini Garden), 2025
Paper Size: 12x16 inches
Edition of 3
Inkjet print produced by Light Work and signed by the artist.

"dreamscapes between borders" is an extension of my project "Traversable Landscape." The project examines the ubiquity of border control, where the borders frame our lives and dreams. I collage images of various border spaces, my cellphone photographs made across different countries, and digitally-generated patterns based on the Guilloché print on my green card and its application documents. These collages confront and deterritorialize the haunted experience navigating various border spaces as an immigrant. The border architectures are destabilized by the torn prints of my photographs that are forming new maps and territories. The repetition of the Guilloché patterns I overlay with my immigration documents questions the relationship between identity and property. These entanglements push and pull, morphing into various dreamscapes. The dream is haunted by the borders, and the borders can also be taken over by dreams. 

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徐冠宇 Guanyu Xu (b.1993 Beijing) is an artist currently based in Chicago and Beijing. He is the recipient of the Chicago DCASE Artist Grant, CENTER Development Grant, Hyéres International Festival Prize, PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai Exposure Award, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center Annual Competition, and Kodak Film Photo Award. He has received artist residencies including ACRE (Steuben, WI), Light Work (Syracuse, NY), Latitude (Chicago, IL), Pioneer Works (New York, NY), and Swatch Art Peace Hotel (Shanghai, China).

His works have been exhibited and screened internationally including the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge; International Center of Photography, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; New Orlean Museum of Art, New Orleans; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; 36th Kasseler Dokfest, Germany, and others. His work can be found in public collections including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Harvard Art Museums, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, New Orleans Museum of Art, among others. His works have been featured in numerous publications including The New York Times, Phaidon, Thames & Hudson, ArtAsiaPacific, The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Dazed, and China Photographic Publishing House.

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