Lishuang Xu (b.1989, Changsha) is an art practitioner based in China. She graduated from University of the Arts London (Chelsea College of Arts) with First Class Honours in BA Fine Art. Xu has participated in residency programs and performance programs such as OCAT (Shenzhen), Machang, Shanghai Improv Festival, UP-ON International Live Art Festival and Vortex Macalline.
Engaging with urban spaces through physical intervention and camera documentation, Xu investigates the increasingly alienated and unstable relationship between individuals, living space, and architecture. Through video, performance, and installation, she constructs scenes of otherness and scenarios of playful seriousness based on everyday life and mundane behaviour. By reinforcing bodily experience, she aims to reveal the entanglement between subjective perception and objective reality.
title : Untitled in the City
year: 2018
venue : at the pedestrian bridge of Holborn Viaduct, London
project : self organized
camera : Yijia Wu, Jiamin Li
edit : Lishuang Xu 徐立霜
In 2018, I intervened in a space located at the Holborn Viaduct Pavilion in the City of London. This public walkway serves as a connecting point between the viaduct and the lower-ground road, allowing pedestrians to navigate between these two levels of the city. People always pass through here quickly, busy and anxious, in an environment where everything seems to operate with orderly precision. I intended to begin my actions in a seemingly mundane manner but executed them in an unusual way. I discovered a looping pathway through the stairs and elevators and started walking in reverse along this circuit. This act of walking backward during the live performance marked the beginning of my long-term exploration of backward walking in urban environments.
title : In Another Place, In Another Skin
date: 2022/9/2
venue : Aike Gallery, Shanghai
project : Aike Gallery
camera : Xizi Hua
edit : Lishuang Xu 徐立霜
In Another Place, In Another Skin takes the gestures of labor as a form of performance to interrogate the anonymity and invisibility of labor within processes of manufacturing and production. The performance has two versions. The first version was presented during an open studio at the artist’s residency. The artist hid inside a plinth, revealing only her hands above it to create an “artwork” for the audience. The video documentation features the second version, performed during a gallery opening. Two workers carried a plinth containing the artist into the event space in front of the audience. Using comedic body language, the artist performed and collaborated with the workers to install an artwork on-site.
title : Urgency Addiction_The Human Condition in Fast Forward（急迫成影）
date: 22024/7/7
venue : Embankment Building, Shanghai
project : Vortex Macalline Center of Art
camera : Dazhi Huang, Huirong Ye, Jinghan Wang, Lilian Lijuan Liu, Mingjing Yu, yy
edit : Lishuang Xu 徐立霜
Urgency Addiction is an experimental live performance that explores the dynamics of active and passive roles under states of urgency, examining how individuals may relinquish their rights in such conditions. The project invited young people who do not have full-time employment, to intervene in an empty space within an apartment building in Shanghai at dusk. During the workshop, the most striking moment for me was the initial interaction among the recruited participants—those early encounters between strangers. I didn’t give them specific instructions; instead, everyone explored their own actions amidst the unfamiliarity of being with others. After entering the site, I searched for discarded objects in the space and transformed them into props for the performance, which I then distributed to the participants.
Holding these seemingly random “props,” they wandered and played in the space, embodying a genuine sense of aimlessness. Later, I incorporated this part into the performance itself.
The performance carried dual objectives: on one hand, I aimed to organize an activity taking place within a social space; on the other, I intended for the process to serve as an observation and research effort. The abandoned space within a historic building already carried a performative quality. Our intervention into such a space reflected the conflict between the different needs of the city’s “original inhabitants” and its evolving ecosystems. How can life and performance find a balance and coexist?
To the audience, the performance might have appeared decadent and poetic. On the other hand, from the very beginning, nearby shop owners were already shouting toward us, “Does that wall really have to be knocked hard?” Later, about 15 minutes into the performance, an older man violently interrupted the performance, entering the space to assert his dominance. Within just 15 minutes, the fragile balance between the demands of the old and new “residents” had been broken.
title : Human Be In
date: 2017
venue : London
project : self organized
camera : Yijia Wu
edit : Lishuang Xu 徐立霜