Galerie du Monde is delighted to share artist Guanyu Xu's series, "Resident Aliens," is featured in Aperture Magazine. Written by Xuan Juliana Wang, the article explores how “Resident Aliens” was first created as a development of Xu's previous series, "Temporarily Censored Home”. Created "Temporarily Censored Home” from 2018, Xu transformed his parents' Beijing apartment using images from his new life as an artist and a gay man in Chicago. Then the pandemic began, Xu was unable to return to China, causing his memories of his childhood home to become blurred. This experience served as the inspiration for "Resident Aliens", a series that involves capturing the stories of his subjects through photography and installation, resulting in a powerful exchange of emotions and a reimagining of their histories.
"In a sense, I am a foreign agent, acting upon a verbal agreement, and I am invading their space. It is an exchange of power,” Xu says. "But my subjects and I are equals. I understand what it takes for them to open up their homes for me, to go through their belongings to find artifacts, and to ask friends and family to send me childhood photos.”
Xu’s “Temporarily Censored Home” series is currently on view at the Harvard Art Museums, while “Resident Aliens” are currently on view at Galerie du Monde and MSU Broad Art Museum.
Read the full article--
https://issues.aperture.org/article/2023/2/2/guanyu-xu
About “Resident Aliens”--
Resident Aliens presents photographic installations within immigrants’ interior spaces to examine their personal histories and complex experiences. Xu creates ephemeral installations within private space, transforming the interior into a hall of mirrors that captures immigrants’ life and blurs the boundaries between the familiar and foreignness, private and public, belonging and alienation.
