Watch Yuge Zhou’s Melancholy Pas de Deux Illuminate theMART

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Two dancers reach out to one another, entering and withdrawing from the central column of Chicago‘s theMART, in a new projection entitled Love Letters.

‘The project was conceived during the pandemic,’ artist Yuge Zhou told Ocula Magazine.

‘I was not able to go back to China to visit my family. This project is my way of processing that separation and isolation as an individual and an artist,’ she said.

‘I wanted to create this piece about the journey of two people meeting each other, from isolation to connection. I wanted to do it through dance and movement because for me gestures, or movement, is a more universal way of communicating than language.’

Love Letters (2022) will show at 8.30pm from 8 September to 2 October and at 9pm from 3 October to 18 November as part of the series Art on theMART, which launched in 2018. Other artists who have featured include Nick Cave, Petra Cortright, and Diana Thater.

‘It’s super exciting and challenging to work on this iconic, larger than life architectural canvas. What I felt most important was to address the windows of the facade, which reminded me of an urban grid.’

‘I wanted the two people to move in and out of these fragmented shapes, as if they are playing hide and seek in the labyrinth of the city.’

Yuge Zhou also has an exhibition at the Chinese American Museum of Chicago until 16 October. It features her ongoing video series ‘Moon Drawings’, in which she films herself dragging a suitcase by moonlight. Zhou recorded herself making circles in the snow during winter and the sand during summer to mark the seemingly interminable travel bans.

‘I asked my mum to come here to see my show, and my mum refused. She said she can’t come over. There’s not many flights, it’s very expensive, and she’d have to quarantine for two or three weeks.’

‘It’s kind of sad that I can’t go back to China, and my parents can’t come to visit me here,’ she said.

Raised in Beijing, Zhou has lived in Chicago since 2012. She has described the projection as a love letter to her adopted home.

‘I’m a city girl. A lot of my work addresses connections, longing and isolation between people and places in urban environments.’ —[O]

Main image: Video by Sam Gaskin.