FESTIVAL SELECTEE 2025
YUJIE ZHOU
WHITE SHADOWS
The Finnish based Chinese artist Yujie Zhou weaves images that presents us with a different take on the theme ‘Into the Light’ as well as on notions of photography. The title of their project ‘White Shadows’ references the white thread of the jacquard technique they use to create handwoven tapestries based on photographs from their propaganda imposed upbringing. By using this technique Zhou bypasses censorship and surveillance making faces and people invisible that were once visible on the photographs. In Mandarin photography translates to ‘capturing shadows’ highlighting a focus on making something visible that was previously in the dark. Zhou’s bodily practice of weaving reverses this process radically and allows them to reclaim agency. Stepping into the white shadows is thus a form of camouflage they can use to evade and reflect on the social control imposed by a system in the country they were raised in.
“What I want to deal with is how people are trying to evade censorship and protect themselves. That's also a reason to use weaving and to work with algorithms and binary code at the same time. I use my weaving to show something from the system and also to make something invisible using the same system.”
— Yujie Zhou
INTO THE LIGHT
Capturing Shadows
Project: White Shadows by Yujie Zhou
Utilizing expanded photography and image making, Chinese artist Yujie Zhou’s White Shadows is a series of handwoven tapestries created using Jacquard weaving techniques (weaving loom). The work becomes a method of rewriting historical narratives and social conditioning through bodily practice.
Yujie Zhou // White Shadows
Stepping into the shadows
The direct translation of photography in Mandarin is ‘capturing shadows’; this becomes a metaphor for making something visible that has previously been in the dark. The title of Zhou’s project, White Shadows, references the white thread of the woven works being brought to the forefront of the work. What was once hidden in their personal archives is now front and center, creating “white shadows”.
The use of shadows also draws on building photographic knowledge from the perspective of a shadow compared to a light. When surveilled, shadows can provide safety and resistance to uniformity found in normative conventions.
Weaving to reclaim bodily agency
Having an embodied approach to weaving photographic works has always been an integral element in Zhou’s works. The body holds memories and these memories are embedded into the weaving as they create each strand, focused on interwoven layers and layers of visible to invisible voices. A push and pull of reclaiming agency and simultaneously erasing oneself to maintain it.
Zhou plays with the idea from Mandarin linguistics of describing the body as a space of inscription and their own body as a producer of the narrative. Instead of the body being inscribed upon, they turn it on its head, taking back the language prescribed for them and weaving their own bodily language.
“My artistic inquiry becomes, then, a healing journey. The time spent working with and through my body is restorative, it heals my wounds. Creating artworks is, for me, a way of writing; a process that leaves new kinds of traces in my body. I now decide what I do and do not allow to leave a mark on me; and that is, for me, a token of resistance.”
Yujie Zhou // White Shadows
The binary quality of jacquard weaving
The medium pushes the boundaries of photography through jacquard weaving, which parallels the function of early computers by translating binary code into black-and-white pixels. The monochromatic palette creates a timeless quality, blurring the line between past and present.
Faces in the images fade into ambiguity, while the visible traces of yarn introduce a “glitching” effect—hinting at the movement and labor behind the weaving process. This glitching echoes the internal questioning one experiences when reflecting on a past self. When installed, the works reveal both sides of the weave, with one presenting a photographic “negative.” Despite its textile form, the practice remains deeply rooted in photography.
Bypassing censorship through ‘undercover’ images
Looking back at Zhou’s personal archive where they had participated in body discipline practices, Zhou could identify themself in some images, while in others they remained invisible. However, in every image, they knew they were part of the group. This retrospection made them question the reason for participating and led to developing a larger dialogue on social conditioning, culture, and how identity is formed in this collective context.
In the same vein, the agency of the other figures in the images was also considered and camouflaged by the textiles. The use of weaving allowed Zhou to bypass censorship that could be applied if they had chosen more typical digital photographic methods. Weaving became both a photographic tool and a physical and emotional boundary for Zhou against surveillance.
“Another perspective too is self-censorship and I always try to hide my face and also hide other people’s faces in the work. In the design process of weaving files, I can choose how I want people’s faces to be visible and in which ways we can make them unrecognizable.
I hope these objects I have produced, my body of work, can survive the all-encompassing ban. That they can function as those first few bricks we will use to rebuild, that their illegibility can help carry on our message, and serve as evidence. Their existence is a symbol; a symbol of my experience, of our shared experience. What is imperative is to know these exist, to acknowledge something happened and shall not be forgotten; that, even if in silence, there was resistance.“
Yujie Zhou // White Shadows
INTO THE LIGHT
“When we talk about photography, it’s always talking about light, so for me, it’s more important to bring an alternative way of looking at it. To question how we could see photography from the perspective of a shadow instead of the light and thinking about how photographic knowledge is produced.”
— Yujie Zhou
Interview & Text · Gabriella Presnal and Gaitana Jaramillo · Proof & Edit · Hanna Tokaj and Christine Almlund
ARTIST BIO
Yujie Zhou (b.1997, China) is a visual artist who navigates performativity and a decoded notion of language through photography, textiles, moving images, publishing, and installation. Based on the juxtaposition between their nationalist upbringing and their current life in Finland, their practice interrogates dominant historical narratives and power structures while reframing collective individuality.
Selected achievements
- – 2024 Singapore International Photography Festival.
- – 2024 PhMuseum 2024 Photography Grant, Main Priza, Shortlist.
- – 2024 FUTURES Photography Talent (Fotogalleriet).
- – 2023 Young Artist Grant, Finnish Art Society.
- – 2023 Vontobel Contemporary Photography Sponsorship Prize, Finalist.
