Klik hier voor Nederlands
Hussel Zhu (1994) sees the artist as an elegant court jester: a fool who ignores the rules, but tells stories punctuated by sensitive truths. Raised in the rural outskirts of Shanghai, Zhu observes how he ‘functions and disfunctions’ as an Asian immigrant in Europe, while also becoming increasingly estranged from his traditional childhood due to the rapid modernization of China. This outsider perspective is precisely what enables him to uncover absurdities. By identifying with the character of the court jester, Zhu deliberately seeks out discomfort. For each project he experiments with new materials and techniques. By now his practice encompasses anything from installation, performance, drawing, and sculpture to video.
Zhu’s installation Clean the Dirt (2025) at Prospects combines widely varying trains of thought to create an overlapping composition: a vacuum cleaner with an erect hose ends in a drawing of a showering man. And a Chinese lantern connected to a western oil lamp is covered in images from the gay culture magazine BUTT. Together they convey the feeling of sexual oppression experienced by queer people, something the artist is not only aware of in China, but to a certain degree also in the Netherlands. Replicas of self-built escape contraptions discovered in psychiatric institutions symbolize Zhu’s desire to – much like locked-in patients – escape from the social norms that determine what is abnormal. Where he grew up, the subject of sex was never discussed and even considered dirty. Zhu disputes this: How can something so natural be dirty? In true court jester style, he has wrapped the entire installation in toilet paper, thus using humour to uncover a painful truth.
Text: Esmee Postma
Translated from Dutch by Marie Louise Schoondergang (The Art of Translation)