An artist at the intersection of media and performance
Flo Yuting Zhuborn in 1997 in Shanghai and now based in London, is a performance and film artist whose work transcends the boundaries of traditional mediums. Zhu’s practice explores the complex dynamics of absence and presence, using a diverse toolkit including moving images, computer algorithms, and site-specific performances. His art questions the act of witnessing, whether in person or through a screen, while seamlessly blending popular media forms like vlogs, street games, and horror films. By appropriating these mass-consumed formats, Zhu invites audiences to reconsider the familiar and the mundane, challenging their perceptions of reality and art. His artistic approach is both accessible and exotic, offering an experience that is both immersive and stimulating.
Influenced by her early exposure to alternative theater, Zhu’s artistic approach reflects a deep commitment to the transformative potential of performance. Theater became his primary language of artistic expression, inspiring a fascination with the way staged or spontaneous actions can elevate the mundane into something deeply meaningful. Her preoccupation with themes of presence and absence is inspired by a personal feeling of being closely connected to the media she consumes and creates. This dual relationship of observing and being observed constitutes the heart of his practice, particularly in the context of digital interactions. By drawing on the everyday through widely understood formats, Zhu pushes viewers to reconsider the act of looking and being looked at, thereby expanding definitions of artistic experience.
Flo Yuting Zhu: absence, presence and the art of bearing witness
At the heart of Zhu’s artistic philosophy is the investigation of what it means to witness and be witnessed. Her practice often focuses on this multi-layered relationship, exploring how the act of observing can transform both the viewer and the one being seen. Drawing on her early theater experiences, she creates performances that blur the lines between performer and audience, often involving live-streamed or site-specific works. These performances use everyday media – vlogs, street games or even the eerie aesthetic of homemade horror films – to subvert expectations and challenge the conventions of what we consider “real”. In Zhu’s work, the ordinary becomes the extraordinary through the prism of performance and cinema.
Much of Zhu’s work draws inspiration from her encounters with experimental theater, where she observed how performance could break down conventional boundaries and form a shared observational experience. The experimental nature of alternative theater resonated with Zhu, showing him how performance could transform public or digital spaces into interactive canvases. This approach extends beyond theater as it integrates found objects and digital tools to create performances that are both spontaneous and intricately staged. Zhu’s use of everyday spaces for her art highlights her exploration of presence in a world increasingly mediated by digital platforms, inviting participants to experience her work in surprising ways.
In some of Zhu’s projects, she collaborates with algorithms and artificial intelligence, treating these technologies as creative partners rather than just tools. This interaction between human and machine adds complexity to its exploration of observation, asking questions about who or what is truly engaging the viewer. Its use of algorithms introduces a multi-layered dialogue between natural and digital perspectives, prompting viewers to think about the nature of artistic creation in the technological age. In Zhu’s hands, art becomes a conversation between organic intuition and programmed logic, challenging conventional notions of authorship and agency.
The influence of cinema: horror and liminal spaces
Cinema, particularly horror, plays an important role in shaping Zhu’s artistic landscape. She is particularly drawn to directors like Andrzej Żuławski, Abbas Kiarostami, and Koji Shiraishi, whose works navigate unsettling spaces and nuanced depictions of fear. Żuławski’s Possession, with its raw exploration of femininity, left an indelible mark on Zhu, while Kiarostami’s thoughtful storytelling influenced her commitment to capturing quiet, immersive moments. Shiraishi’s Noroi, known for its use of fragmented and strange narratives, echoes Zhu’s own technique of blending the mundane with the beyond, creating experiences that are both haunting and familiar.
Zhu’s attraction to horror lies not in its traditional scare tactics, but in its ability to explore the unknown in everyday contexts. Rather than relying on shock, Zhu’s work uses the aesthetic of horror, characterized by quiet tension, drawing viewers into a world that is both unsettling and inevitable. Grainy textures, fragmented plots and familiar settings imbued with a sense of dread are hallmarks of his pieces, creating a subtle atmosphere of unease. Invoking themes of horror, Zhu immerses audiences in liminal spaces where the boundary between reality and imagination becomes porous, inviting them to linger in a state of suspense.
His interest in liminal spaces reflects his attention to moments of transition and ambiguity. Zhu’s work often inhabits the gap between the visible and the hidden, much like horror characters who linger on the periphery of perception. Through found footage, livestreams and performances, she reveals and conceals aspects of reality, highlighting the tensions between what is shown and what remains invisible. Zhu’s art resonates in this space of ambiguity, prompting the viewer to question both their perception and the nature of what they are witnessing. By making the familiar seem strange, she forces the audience to confront their role as observers in a constantly mediated world.
Flo Yuting Zhu: creating stories through media
Zhu’s commitment to interdisciplinary art is expressed in a range of influences, including his deep connection to the play Dots and Lines and Takahiro Fujita’s Formed Cube. This play, which Zhu encountered while preparing to move from Shanghai to London, opened her eyes to the possibilities of storytelling beyond linear narratives. The performance’s fragmented visuals and subtle cues—like a toy dinosaur moving unnoticed in the background or unrelated weather images—invited Zhu to imagine art as a centerless, borderless experience. This revelation catalyzed his desire to break away from traditional narrative structures and adopt a more fragmented and multidimensional approach to storytelling.
Building on this knowledge, Zhu began experimenting with moving images and multiple perspectives, creating works that invite viewers to interpret diverse, sometimes contradictory, realities within a single frame. His projects often use simultaneous perspectives, reflecting the fractured nature of modern media consumption. Rather than presenting a single, coherent narrative, his work is a mosaic of isolated but intertwined moments, allowing the audience to construct their own interpretations. This technique reflects the chaotic and fast-paced nature of contemporary life, highlighting Zhu’s interest in depicting an ever-changing digital landscape.
Currently, Zhu dreams of taking this exploration further with a project that would involve living entirely off-grid, documenting his isolated existence as an invisible presence in the natural world. Imagining herself as a spectral figure hidden in the grass or ground, she performed silently, blending into the landscape in a meditative exploration of absence. This concept highlights his ongoing interest in the dynamics of presence, asking profound questions about witnessing in an environment where the audience is absent. Through this imagined project, Zhu seeks to eliminate the expectations of the digital viewer, examining the importance of observing – and being observed – in a world defined by constant visibility.
