FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 2022
From Coast to Coast, Yuge Zhou Interweaves Personal & Historical Narratives in Multiple Exhibitions Across the United States
Love Letters on Art on theMART, Photo by Viktor Gerasimovski
Chicago, IL – Chinese-born, Chicago-based artist Yuge Zhou presents her evocative and poetic video art installations throughout the fall season across multiple cities in the United States.
Best known for her video art installations examining human behavior in natural and urban environments, Zhou’s recent work turns to her personal immigrant experience of “being between two worlds” and paying tribute to overlooked moments in Asian-American history. These multiple series, noted for their nuanced, intricate, and meaningful perspectives, will now exhibit around the country.
Please find more information about her upcoming exhibitions below:
Chinese American Museum of Chicago, Chicago
Moon Drawings, a solo show at the Chinese American Museum of Chicago, as part of their Spotlight Series, curated by Larry Lee.
In Zhou’s on-going video series Moon Drawings, we watch Zhou dragging a suitcase in concentric circles in the snow and on the beach in Chicago to mark the travel bans during the global pandemic. These videos all take place under the moon, an interpretation of a Han Dynasty legend about missing loved ones in a faraway land.
September 3 – October 16, 2022.
Art on theMART, Chicago
Love Letters will be a part of the Chicago Year of Dance program for Art on theMART, a nightly public art projection onto the facade of the Merchandise Mart, curated by Cynthia Noble.
In Love Letters, Zhou portrays a lively courtship dance between two urban dwellers searching for each other through a labyrinth of colorful geometrics with growing curiosity, electricity and affection. Love Letters is Zhou’s first video installation to involve choreographed performance and computational animation.
September 8 – November 16, 2022
McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco
when the East of the day meets the West of the night will be part of the screening series of “Color Code” at the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts in San Francisco.
In when the East of the day meets the West of the night, Zhou films along the same latitudes on parallel sides of the Pacific Ocean, exploring the bonds between her homeland and her adopted country. Composed of footage of areas near San Francisco, California, where some of the first Chinese immigrants landed, as well as Beijing, China, where her mother was quarantined at the start of the pandemic (and played the cello piece that accompanies the work),
September 23, 2022 – January 21, 2023
45th Asian American International Film Festival, New York
Ten Miles of Track in One Day, Zhou’s video installation with artist Hwa-Jeen Na, which won 1st Place in the Installation category for ArtPrize 2021, will exhibit as part of the virtual exhibition (New Media category) at the 45th Asian American International Film Festival.
In Ten Miles of Track in One Day, Zhou captures footage along the actual ten-mile path where emigrant Chinese labored on the transcontinental railroad in Promontory, UT. From 1863 – 1869, The Central Pacific Railroad Company exploited thousands of “railroad Chinese” as manual laborers along 690 miles of tracks in harsh conditions to construct the first railway to connect the East and West coasts in the US. Zhou’s virtual installation spirals around viewers on 36 pillars arranged in a circle to memorialize this band of anonymous workers. The phenakistoscope patterns embed over 100 names that scholars have been able to recover into the very landscapes on which they toiled.
August 3 – August 13, 2022.
About Yuge Zhou
At the age of five, Yuge Zhou became a household name in China as the singer for a popular children’s TV series. Yuge came to the US a decade ago to earn a degree in computer science and subsequently moved into video art and installations. Her work addresses connections, isolation and longing across natural and urban spaces as sites of shared dreams. She creates immersive experiences through digital collaging and sculptural reliefs.
Yuge has exhibited nationally and internationally in prominent art and public venues and is currently a member at NEW INC, New Museum’s art and technology incubator. Recent awards include Juried Award in the installation category at ArtPrize 2021, Artist Fellowship Award in Media Arts from the Illinois Arts Council and Honorary Mention in the 2020 Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. Her work has been featured in various publications such as the New York Magazine, Colossal, and The Atlantic. Yuge holds a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as well as a Master of Science from Syracuse University.
Website: http://yugezhou.com/
Instagram: @yugezhou
