Lu 鹭 Lei

Lu (b. 1999, China) is a Singaporean artist based in London who works predominantly in performance. Her belief that our bodies are living archives embodying our knowledge and experiences has drawn Lu toward performance art. Using her body as a vessel, her current research and series of performances archive her daily life experiences allowing viewers to gain further insight into current issues. Drawing from her experience as a second-generation immigrant, displacement becomes a quintessential sentiment in her practice. Growing up in the constant tension between nationalism and identity, the usage and context of language, specifically accents, and creoles, intrigues her and influences her current body of research.

From accentuations and dialects to questioning the relevance of English in a post-empire context, she explores how they may reshape ideas of identity. Whether through a single word or an entire performance, Lu’s artwork continuously focuses on our relationship with language and how that intertwines with identity. She creates immersive, humorous, and, at times, thought-provoking performances that make you ponder the relationship between narrative, language, and identity.

Lu graduated with a First Class (Hons) in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University in the United Kingdom in 2022, and now travels and is based in both Singapore and London.

Lu has been exposed to traditional performing arts in Chinese comedy since young, watching comedy skits (小品) and Xiangsheng (相声), with her first attempt at performing in front of her primary school at the age of 8. Humour functions not only as a form of entertainment but also as a means of communicating a message or an idea that could be a hard pill to swallow in a digestible bite for the audience.

Her experience in Xiangsheng has made her aware of the necessity of rhythm when dropping the punchlines. She soon realised that she had subconsciously drawn towards language and diction, which plays a vital role in her works. Encountering works by artists such as Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger influenced her toward text-based and later, language-based works.

Addressing complex issues through humour in performance engages the audience and amplifies the message, and later sparks conversations. Lu performs publicly and privately, with performances geared to challenge and educate. The more recent series of performances, This is Illegal in Singapore (Diam leh), seeks to remix and skew the norms of everyday life to blur the lines between art and real life for the participants while in search of means to blur the lines between visibilities and invisibilities.