Guanyu Xu - Duration of Stay

7 June - 31 August 2023

Opening reception with artist's attendance: 7 June 2023, 5pm to 7pm
Venue: 11 Duddell Street, Central, Hong Kong

Galerie du Monde is delighted to announce Guanyu Xu’s “Duration of Stay”, which marks the Chicago-based Chinese artist’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong. Influenced by the production of ideology in American visual culture and a conservative familial upbringing in China, Xu’s practice extends from examining the production of power in photography and collage, to the question of personal freedom and its relationship to political regimes.

Fractured identity and forms of belonging are central to the artist’s practice and integral to all aspects of the work in the exhibition. Juxtaposing landscapes with an intimate view of personal spaces, the power of Xu’s imagination is founded upon the negotiation and reinterpretation of images over time, making space for multiplicity and growth.

"Duration of Stay" features Xu’s work from multiple series, including his long-term project Resident Aliens that addresses the idea of citizenship and form of belonging; his new Traversable Landscape series which reveals the border regime as a space inherently perpetuating imperialism, xenophobia and racism; a 144-part installation titled Suspension which expresses the artist's powerlessness as an alien in the US during the pandemic and the suspended experience of the deadlock created by political powers; and a video work Complex Formation, where Xu questions the visual hegemony that perpetuated his mother's vision and her influence over him.

Elaborating on his Resident Aliens concept, Xu will profile a domestic helper from the Philippines, a scholar from Northern China, and a refugee from Egypt through his photography, and temporarily reconstruct their living room into a dense mosaic, unveiling a new perspective on the life of these three "resident aliens" in the context of Hong Kong.

Opening at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in August 2023, Guanyu Xu's Temporarily Censored Home series will be featured in the museum's exhibition "Sea Change": https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/sea-change-photographs-from-the-collection/