Junshu Gu
About
Junshu Gu is a London-based artist, writer, and flâneur. Intertwining discourses around anxiety, escapism, and post-truth, her work is rooted in rhizome theory and draws from her multi-year interdisciplinary culture-related work experience.
Borrowing from the vocabulary of New Wave films, antinovel, and music, Junshu's concerns repeatedly revolve around questions of pessoptimism and the hidden initiative behind escapism. Her practice incorporates sculpture, print, sound and moving image that appears minimal and abstract, formally lithesome and precise. Junshu strives to address the allegorical narrative potential that arises from the edge of chaos in the real world, aiming to examine and expose the absence of the female flâneur (flâneuse) in contemporary discourse. She creates a sense of off-kilter rhythm where solid and amorphous energy collide.
Statement
Dream Ⅰ 📌 🎲 ⚪️
I woke up one morning and realised that I was becoming increasingly conscious, but my body had begun to turn transparent. Starting with my fingers, the organs of my body, one by one, gradually liquidised. The process of transformation was a mixture of excitement and anxiety to me. Gain and loss. A delicate balance. The night before I completely turned transparent, I was roaming the streets and saw a magical booth, like a mini laboratory, where I could take blood tests and do divination. Unable to identify the face of the person, but driven by curiosity, I stepped into the cubicle. At last, I chose the right index finger. After that, he went to make the preparations. A couple of minutes later, the diviner held a needle in the shape of a teardrop, filled with a weird liquid, ready for injection. The very moment when the needle tip touched my fingertip, as if a fire had been lit, a flower sprouted from the tip of my index finger. Slow motion. Huge. An obscure flower. Slowly unfurling. A poem gradually emerged on the petals, a hint of divination. I failed to listen to the explanation. With a wondrous feeling, holding high my hand, I strolled away.
Dream Ⅱ 🪜🕳🔺
Jean-Philippe Toussaint passed away. The obituary has lovely misspellings. The black sea. Waves frozen in sculpture. Empty opera house. An abandoned castle. A snowstorm. Dense seats. An experimental noise is playing out. The poster is a map of Edo. The drummer is left-handed. All the audience are blind.
Dream Ⅲ 🧶 🛫🪞
The end of the world. People who like to run red lights are chosen to be sent on Noah's Ark and survive. The group drifts to an island in the Arctic Circle. The last inhabitants of the island speak a fawn-like language. There is no way to make conversation. One person who sings out of tune says she gets two lines: There is no electricity on the island. What is the film?
'I hope this finds you well.'
'I hope this finds you well.'
This project centered around anxiety served as the catalyst for escapism. After experimenting with various mediums, such as water drops, dice, and emojis, the huge mirrored balloon, standing at the same height as the artist, ultimately became the symbolic representation of anxiety.
The title's courteous salutation, often encountered in emails, proves to be an ineffectual source of solace. The two collections of photographs—I see these as ID and life photos—chronicle the journey of navigating anxiety within the confines of a private realm. It gives birth to an immense, reflective heterotopia of one's own existence. Eventually, they will be meticulously folded into envelopes and dispatched.
Medium: Foil Balloon | Print | Film | Envelope
Size: 164cm diameter | variable size.
'I’m increasingly pessoptimistic.'
'I’m increasingly pessoptimistic.'
This is a project about a nose.
‘One day, the nose escapes from the face’. The soft, tiny, and sensitive nose, which is not allergic to pollen, but to cat hair, suddenly stirs awake. Taking inspiration from Nikolai Gogol's 'The Nose', this project evolves into a monologue wherein the runaway nose, escaping the face of anxiety, stages a first-person, stream-of-consciousness play. Meanwhile, 'Missing Nose' posters are strategically displayed in public spaces to add a touch of absurdity and playfulness to the textual project.
The Chinese character for nose (鼻) also represents the self (自) in ancient Chinese. This artwork delves into the concepts of flâneurs and self-awareness, employing minimalist forms infused with personal anecdotes. It serves as a microcosm of the artist's own experiences in London life. Through this work, the artist endeavors to explore the hidden connection between aimless escapism and the quest for identity without definite answers. It reflects the ever-growing sense of 'pessoptimism' as humanity grapples with complex emotions.
Medium: Text | Print | T-shirt
Size: variable size
'All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking', but…
'All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking', but…
'In Barcelona, my phone was robbed by a man on a motorbike', an unfortunate but not uncommon incident. However, for a woman who takes pride in being a flâneur, someone who is self-organized and adept at solo travel, this event dealt a blow to her self-perception and was considered a traumatic experience. This prompted the artist to question the definition of a flâneur once again.
'In Barcelona, my phone was robbed by a man on a motorbike', an unfortunate but not uncommon incident. However, for a woman who takes pride in being a flâneur, someone who is self-organized and adept at solo travel, this event dealt a blow to her self-perception and was considered a traumatic experience. This prompted the artist to question the definition of a flâneur once again.
The unexpected happens. In the aura of Walter Benjamin, she started to reconceptualize the word 'flâneur' in contemporary discourse. In French, the feminine equivalent of flâneur is not a female flâneur, but an indoor lounge chair. Apparently, the absence of women was not only present in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but still in contemporary discourse. The urgency of the art is revived.
Finally, we return to Paris, the birthplace of the term flâneur. This project is dedicated to the female flâneur (flâneuse) who, despite apprehension and having experienced the limitations imposed by society on femininity, possesses the strength to venture from 'A Room of One's Own' into the darkness, into the public sphere, engaging with urban spaces, and gaining insight into their own existence—a grand escape. Through a non-linear narrative, following the rhythm of Virginia Woolf's 'Street Haunting,' the video shares thoughts on the coexistence of resilience and vulnerability, a unique and feminine way of accumulating.
Medium: Moving Image | Sound
Size: 4'33" | 2'