“Zhou’s stirring moving image works, performances, and videos, often layers personal and political histories addressing questions of place, the silences in the archive, and the forces of connection.“- juror Gee Wesley, Curatorial Assistant Department of Media and Performance, MoMA.

Yuge Zhou is the 2024 Joyce Foundation Artadia Awardee.

At the age of five, Yuge Zhou 周雨歌 became a household name in China as the singer for popular children’s TV series. Yuge came to the US almost two decades ago to earn a degree in computer science and subsequently moved into video art, film and installation. Yuge has exhibited and screened nationally and internationally in prominent art and public venues, most recently at Midnight Moment in Times Square. Her work has been featured in the New York Magazine, Hyperallergic and Frieze, and acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation.

Growing up in the second stage of China’s economic reform, Yuge witnessed a massive influx of migration, expansion and globalization. As she has moved between continents and from the East coast to the Midwest, she has become deeply intrigued with coexistence and our social encounters across urban spaces. Her recent projects explore the geographical, ideological and emotional distance between her homeland and America—her adopted country—and broader challenges of transcending separation.