ARTIST

Guanyu Xu

The image shows a room with various large photographs and posters taped to the walls. The images on the posters include scenes of windows, American flags, a sky with clouds, a beach, and a couple lying together. A green stool with books and smaller photographs is in front of the wall. There is a houseplant on the left side and another room with a fan and more plants visible through an open door on the right. A person's arm is visible on the left, partially obscured by a wall, and another person's feet are visible peeking from behind the stool. A pillow with butterfly prints is on the floor in the foreground.
Guanyu Xu | “Space of Mutation (from the series ‘Temporary Censored Home’)” ⓘ
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Guanyu Xu (b. 1993, Beijing) is a Chinese-born artist based in Chicago whose interdisciplinary practice encompasses photography, installation, and new media. His work interrogates identity, migration, and power structures, particularly through the lens of his experiences as a gay man raised in a conservative military family in China. Xu’s notable series, Temporarily Censored Home (2018–2019), involved covertly transforming his parents’ Beijing residence into a queer space by layering it with photographs of LGBTQ+ life from the U.S., family images, and media clippings. This act of reclamation critiques both personal and political boundaries. Xu holds degrees from the Beijing Film Academy and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited internationally at institutions such as the Aperture Foundation, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Fotomuseum Winterthur, and is held in public collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a lecturer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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