Solo Exhibition ShanghART M50, Shanghai
ShanghART Gallery is pleased to present Lu Yu’s solo exhibition Living a Life Safely in Fear from September 6 to October 26, 2025, at the gallery’s M50 space in Shanghai. Employing an epidemiological framework, Lu Yu analyzes sociocultural pathologies by observing and mapping their symptoms, modes of transmission, complications, and potential treatments. The exhibition features over twenty mixed-media wall works, sculptures, and installations created by the artist over the past two years. Structured into four interrelated series, the works investigate how the discipline and power—often concealed within everyday life—are gradually adapted and internalized by individuals, eventually proliferating and evolving on a collective level. Together, these works present a formative stage in the artist’s ongoing research and practice.
Epidemiology, from its etymological root meaning “the study of what happens upon the public,” not only investigates the distribution of human health conditions but also seeks to identify the factors that influence them. In doing so, it reveals the multidimensional roles of collective culture, lifestyles, endemic behaviors, and public events as contributing factors to disease. In her practice, Lu Yu adopts the methods of descriptive and observational study within this field, treating sociocultural pathologies as “epidemics” characterized by transmissibility, clustering, and susceptibility. Through specific mixed-media materials, she offers a visual articulation of these conditions. The four series presented in this exhibition together establish a conceptual framework that is still in the process of development and refinement: Discipline in the Name of Salvation — symptoms of internalized discipline; Gentian Violet— modes of transmission of discipline and societal expectations; Unwitting Instruments — complications arising from adapting to rules; and Synesthesia — potential remedies for the atrophy of feelings within rationalized society.
In the materials and visual language employed in her works, Lu Yu constructs two intuitive pathways: the instinctual intuition of the human as a biological being, and the constructed intuition of the human as a social being. The biological intuition is grounded in genetic mechanisms of seeking benefit and avoiding harm. Visual elements such as festering skin, sutured wounds, and slaughtered animal bodies trigger primal responses of aversion. Meanwhile, the social intuition arises from past experience and cultural adaptation: the appearance of elements such as red envelopes, lottery tickets, or burning incense is immediately intelligible, even outside of any textual context. Within the artworks, these two intuitive pathways intersect, using explicit visual language to render abstract concepts in forms that evoke unease. The exhibition’s title piece, Living a Life Safely in Fear, serves as a summative reflection on the internalization of discipline. The life of an individual living within the confines of prescribed norms is quantified into countless nodes that can be evaluated as right or wrong. Inscribed on over three hundred fragments of skin and each marked with a red check, these symbols signify achievement and compliance within the socially constructed intuition, while simultaneously registering, through biological instinct, as wounds scorch into the flesh.
Through an interdisciplinary dialogue, the exhibition offers a cognitive framework for reconsidering power and discipline. It seeks to interrogate the rules and their mechanisms, which are both pervasive and often concealed, while also providing a visual and speculative reference for how individuals might maintain perceptual awareness and independence within contemporary life dominated by order.
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