Center for the Arts

Wesleyan University's College of East Asian Studies Gallery presents “Guanyu (Gary) Xu: Temporarily Censored Home” February 6 through May 22, 2020

Middletown, Conn.—"Guanyu (Gary) Xu: Temporarily Censored Home," an exhibition featuring photography and video by the Chinese-born artist, currently based in Chicago, will be on view in Wesleyan University’s College of East Asian Studies Gallery at Mansfield Freeman Center, located at 343 Washington Terrace on the Wesleyan campus in Middletown, Connecticut, from Thursday, February 6 through Friday, May 22, 2020. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from Noon to 4pm. Admission is free and open to the public. Please see below for more information about the exhibition.
 
There will be an opening reception and artist talk on Thursday, February 6, 2020 at Noon.
 
This exhibition was closed on Saturday, March 7, 2020 due to spring break, and then closed until further notice due to a cancellation of all events and exhibitions on campus on Thursday, March 12, 2020 due to COVID-19.
 
The College of East Asian Studies Gallery at Mansfield Freeman Center is curated by Associate Director of Visual Arts Benjamin Chaffee and Exhibitions Manager Rosemary Lennox.

Support for this exhibition is provided by the Center for East Asian Studies and the Center for the Arts.
 
About the Exhibition

Guanyu (Gary) Xu was born in Beijing, China in 1993 and moved to the U.S. in 2014 to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Xu is currently based in Chicago. During visits home to China, Xu created "Temporarily Censored Home," a series of photographs of interventions in his parents’ domestic space. Alone in their apartment while they were away at work, Xu positioned photographic images throughout their home, hanging from ceilings, lying like rugs on the floor, forming wallpaper, draping over beds, and filling desktop computer screens. These images consist of portraits of Xu and other gay men in domestic settings; photographs of the landscape and built environment in the United States, Europe, and China; torn pages from film and fashion magazines that Xu collected as a teenager; and images from family photo albums. Xu photographed these temporary installations creating complex juxtapositions of his family history with his own similarly concealed queer identity, unknown to Xu’s parents. "Temporarily Censored Home" includes five photographs from the series and one vinyl wall mural, each a maximalist, overwhelming portrait of collective identity. These powerful acts of intervention create a self-portrait of Xu’s intersectional sexuality and nationality. The fluidity of this expression lies in tension, both formally and conceptually, with Xu’s difficulty in openly acknowledging his identity in all aspects of his life.

The exhibit also includes "Complex Formation" (2019), a single-channel video he made by editing cellphone images taken by his mother during three trips they took together to the U.S. and Europe, combined with a 3D animation made by the artist. The video, installed in the College of East Asian Studies living room, is accompanied by a monologue and conversation with his mother on their varying ideas of art, cultural influence, the American Dream, the ideal life, safety in both the U.S. and China, and the potentiality of the future
 
About the Artist

徐冠宇 Guanyu Xu was the recipient of the Fred Endsley Memorial Fellowship and the James Weinstein Memorial Fellowship. He is the winner of the Lenscratch Student Prize, the Foam Talent, and the Lensculture Emerging Talent Award, and the runner-up of the Aperture Foundation Portfolio Prize. His works have been exhibited internationally including the Aperture Foundation, New York; the International Center of Photography Museum, New York; Athens Photo Festival, Greece; Format Photo Festival, United Kingdom; EXPO Chicago, Chicago; Mint Museum, Charlotte, and others. His works have been featured in numerous publications including The New Yorker, W Magazine, Aint-Bad Magazine, Musée Magazine, Der Greif, and China Photographic Publishing House.