We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Zhu Gaocanyue. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Zhu Gaocanyue below.

Zhu Gaocanyue, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

When principles are framed and generalized as knowledge, how do we view everything when the unknown remains infinite?

In The South Is Infinite Yet Finite, I try to visualize my perplexity and thoughts regarding understanding binary and hierarchical systems of knowledge production.

I arrived in the United States in the summer of 2023. My obsession with formations of knowledge materialized into a packed Google Calendar. Driven by a relentless curiosity to know more, I visit nearby spaces where knowledge resides as often and widely as possible. The institutions I visited have all spent a long time refining their portrayals of urban history, allowing me to briefly explore a narrow slice of specific history and culture—of a particular people, a particular medium, a particular field, a particular nation. They present answers shaped by the most powerful voices in their communities. Every piece of information has been filtered and delayed countless times, making it more or less disconnected from current realities.

Walking through these places, I was overwhelmed by the colors, symbols, textures, and structures of objects, the realities they implied, and the fragments of time they carried. The photographs I took there were fleeting glimpses, a way of digesting everything I was learning. My perspective is limited. My map is a fragment reduced by cartographic generalization—it is neither a full picture nor capable of encompassing everything.

Back in my studio, almost obsessively, I analyze my photographs to understand what triggered me to think and create. I research the history and present of these locations, I create more photos based on my understanding, all while grappling with the humbling realization that it is impossible to know all.

Infinity—both desperate and exhilarating.

Zhu Gaocanyue, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a multidisciplinary artist working across photography, printmaking, installation, and artist books. Viewing images as a form of visual vocabulary, I use photographic language to excavate the unseen—probing beneath surfaces to engage with the layered realities of people, objects, and histories. My recent research explores shifting definitions of value and investigates how humans relate to non-functional objects, obsolete knowledge systems, and marginalized forms of labor.

I earned an MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and has since expanded my practice through fellowships, exhibitions, and international book fairs. I received full fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center and The Studios at MASS MoCA, where I develope projects that integrated experimental image-making with archival research and expanded print-based practices.

In 2024, I co-founded zug press with Zuya Yang—an independent publishing house. Driven by passion, experimentation, multidisciplinarity and community, zug press’s mission is to publish accessible art books, make precious book arts and explore experimental practices in material, printing and binding. Collaborating closely with artists who work in different creative fields, zug press gathers everyone’s voices through the love of books.

zug press has participated in numerous book fairs, including ICP Photobook Fest, Press Play by Pioneer Works, the Singapore International Photography Festival (SIPF), Unbound Art Book Fair, Other Islands Book Fair, Jersey Art Book Fair. Upcoming events include the Seoul Art Book Fair, Taipei Art Book Fair, etc.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

“What do you do?”
“I am an artist.”
“Wow, what kind of art do you make?”
“Uhhh…”

It is still a challenge for me to describe what I do in a short conversation. Once, a photographer asked me what kind of photos I take, and I could not give a specific answer. I do not follow the subject itself; I follow what lies behind the subjects—the history or resources they carry, why they appear and persist, and what or who supports them. Photography records my observations and reveals my interests, but those observations are only the beginning of my questions. If someone looks up my projects, they may seem very different visually, but they share the same core curiosity about what I care about.

I am a visual artist. I am interested in visualizing processes that are normally unseen and histories that are often limitless. I mainly make images, and I work through photography, printmaking, drawing, and bookmaking. I use natural materials like plants, wood, and stone, as well as artificial materials such as paper, metal, glass, and photographic chemicals. I see my artwork as the fore-edge of a book—an entry point that reveals my processes and the subjects that matter.

My work is a record of the path I walk. It is not a reproduction of reality, but a supplement to it. I hope it never gives definitive answers, instead allowing viewers to resonate with it, expand their perspectives, make connections, and find their own reflections. I intend for my questions to inspire more questions.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I make art to feed my endless desire to know more; in return, the work I make engages with the world, acting as another form of myself that can communicate across time, place, and culture. Even the imagination of someone observing my creations, finding questions, inspiration, and connections through understanding, makes me feel deeply excited and rewarded.

On the other hand, my life has changed through making art. I have learned to observe subjects more deeply, to listen, to recognize the limits of my understanding, and to be surprised by the nature of life—full of unexpected things, whether good or bad. Those new ideas, life experineces, new experiments with materials always motivate me to explore more, and then I find that my life becomes much more exciting: I collaborated with a GIScientist during one art+science workshop to transform her research into an artist book; I visited a volunteer-run museum more than five times, helping them with photo documentation; I went mushroom and plants hunting in the forests to make the next printmaking book and artworks…etc. I can do weird things without reason, feel living, and gain meaning after.

There is always a desire in my heart: to be seen, and to speak up. To make visible the ways I pay attention to, to frame, and assign meaning to what surrounds me. Art making helps me do everything about that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://zhugaocanyue.com
• Instagram: zhu_gaocanyue
• Linkedin: Zhu Gaocanyue
• Other: zug press
  zugpress.com
  [email protected]

Image Credits

Wen Zhang