Purchase Guanyu Xu's fine print from 2021 and receive a free copy of his contact sheet from his 2022 exhibition at Light Work, Suspended Status. Please note the frame is not included.
Contact Sheet
Contact Sheet 219: Guanyu Xu
Publisher: Light Work (October 2022)
ISBN: 978-1-945725-28-9
Guanyu Xu’s Suspended Status depicts an artist caught in a web of red tape. The work on view for this exhibition comprises images from his ongoing series, Resident Aliens, as well as a large grid of images that he calls Suspension. Both bodies of work use visa status in the United States as a means of framing images that depict people who are suspended between countries and cultures. Their futures hang on faceless state agencies in a churning political current.
Fine Print
HL-07252014-1127202, 2021
Archival inkjet print, 11x13.75" image on 13x15.75" paper
Edition of 50, signed and numbered by the artist
Resident Aliens presents physical photographic installations within immigrants’ interior spaces to examine their personal histories and complex experiences. Through photographing the layered images of immigrants’ interior spaces, belongings, personal photo archives, and pictures of places they captured in this world, the project blurs the boundaries between the familiar and foreignness, private and public, belonging and alienation. The project is situated between photography, installation, and performance, constructing layered images of identity, personal history, and the built environment. Since 2020, Xu has engaged in collaborations with over forty individuals residing in Chicago, East Lansing, New York, Hong Kong, Beijing, Nanjing, and Shanghai. Resident Aliens is particularly meaningful as we face the rise of neo-nationalism and xenophobia across the globe.
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Born in Beijing in 1993, 徐冠宇 Guanyu Xu currently makes Chicago his base. He is a lecturer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His major influences are the production of ideology in American visual culture and a conservative familial upbringing in China. Xu’s practice examines the production of power in photography as well as the fate of personal freedom and its relationship to political regimes. He negotiates these questions from his perspective as a Chinese gay man. Xu makes use of photography, new media, and installation, and his work across media intentionally reflects aspects of his displaced and fractured identity. He is the recipient of the CENTER Development Grant (2021), Chicago DCASE Artist Grant (2022), Hyéres International Festival Prize (2020), Kodak Film Photo Award (2019), Lensculture Emerging Talent Award (2019), Philadelphia Photo Arts Center Annual Competition (2019), and PHOTO-FAIRS Shanghai Exposure Award (2020). He has been an artist-in-residence at ACRE (Chicago), Latitude (Chicago), and Light Work.