Guanyu Xu's "Parents' Bedroom" (2018) is featured in group exhibition "Queer Lens: A History of Photography" presented by the J. Paul Getty Musuem at the Getty Center.
Dates: 17 June - 28 September 2025
Location: Getty Center, Museum West Pavilion, Lower Level
Since the mid-19th century, photography has served as a powerful tool for examining concepts of gender, sexuality, and self-expression. The immediacy and accessibility of the medium has played a transformative role in the gradual proliferation of homosocial, homoerotic, and homosexual imagery. Despite periods of severe homophobia, when many photographs depicting queer life were suppressed or destroyed, this exhibition brings together a variety of evidence to explore the medium’s profound role in shaping and affirming the vibrant tapestry of the LGBTQ+ community.
“In Temporarily Censored Home, I covertly situated photographs in my teenage home in Beijing to queer the normativity of my parents’ heterosexual space. Through positioning and layering images, I aim to juxtapose, contradict, and collapse space and time, disrupting my teenage home. The images bridge the relationship between personal and political in the context of the oppressive systems of both China and the US. Even though these installations were not permanent, I reclaimed my home in Beijing as a queer space of freedom and temporary protest.” — Guanyu Xu
Learn more--
https://www.getty.edu/exhibitions/queer-lens/
