Xu Guanyu 徐冠宇 (b. 1993)

Born and raised in China, Xu moved to the United States in 2014, where he completed his Master in Fine Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago. Since moving to the US, he has been exploring his complex personal history and identity, producing work that highlights the disparities and connections between the two nations he calls home. Working with photographic installations, Xu reveals the chasm between his experiences in the US as a gay Chinese man and his conservative family upbringing in China. 

His photos have been the recipient of many awards such as the Hyéres International Festival Prize (2020), the PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai Exposure Award (2020), the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center Annual Competition (2019), the Lensculture Emerging Talent Award (2019) and the Kodak Film Photo Award (2019). He has received artist residencies at ACRE and Latitude in Chicago and at Light Work in New York.

Xu’s works have been exhibited and screened at the Aperture Foundation and the International Center of Photography in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Mint Museum in North Carolina and the Wesleyan University in Connecticut. In Europe, he has shown at Fotomuseum Winterthur in  Switzerland, at the 36th Kasseler Dokfest in Germany and Somerset House in London. Xu has also exhibited at the Goethe Institute in Beijing.

His pieces can be found in the public collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Harvard Art Museums at Massachusetts, the New Orleans Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. His works have also been featured in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, W Magazine, The Financial Times, Vogue, Musée Magazine, Der Greif and China Photographic Publishing House.

Xu is currently based in Chicago and is a lecturer at the University of Illinois.