Studying at KHiO 2021: Academy of Fine Art

What has it been like to study at KHiO? 

For the past six years, I have educated in Hong Kong. I started my study in KHiO in 2019 as my first time studying abroad. What I realize is that studying here is like a process of independent learning. Based on our own artistic practice and projects we work on, we could have different ways to contribute: working in our own studio, doing tutorials, having lesson with the class, material testing in workshop, taking KUNO course and so on.

In addition, studying at KHiO expanded my network in Oslo and had the opportunities to participate in projects outside of school. I am also grateful that the people I know here are very generous and willing to share their knowledge and talents with me.

What is your key takeaway from KHiO? 

Our graduation group exhibition “The Great Indoors" at Kunstnernes Hus is an unforgettable experience for me. With the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic and the condition that the exhibition can no longer have audiences, what reason do we have to make the exhibition? At the beginning of this year, our class discussed this issue with our curator, Pedro Gómez-Egaña (also our professor). In the end, we decided to change the graduation show into an art residency form, and let our classmates and curator stay together in Kunstnernes Hus for three weeks. Each day we started with breakfast, and celebrated different ceremonies, such as International Banana/Tea Day, International Draw a Picture of Bird Day and so on. We gradually built this unfamiliar exhibition space into our home, and then healed the anxiety we felt over the past year in this place.

This move shocked me because I experienced the moment that staying together is a way of collective healing.

Tell us about your graduation project

“Genetic Salon” is a sci-fi imagining which builds on queer notions of the fluctuation of body, gender and identity, as well as the theories of the digital age and the quantization of everything in big data. The project is constructed in the form of an exhibition, a text, and a short fiction film. In my graduation project, I invited five artists and a curator who also focus their practice on the imagination of the human future to be the protagonists of the “Genetic Salon” short film. I wrote five separate narrative branches based on each individual research focus; diversified body shape; variation of sensation; cost of change; origin of human existence value; future of hybrid. 

The film was presented in Skylight Gallery KHiO and an online interactive form.

Online interactive exhibition

What’s next?

I am very pleased to be awarded the one-year studio grant (FKDS) at Kunstnernes hus, to continue my artistic practices in Oslo. For this summer, I will present my graduation project at K4 Gallery as my first solo show in Oslo. Moreover, the project will be also participating in group exhibitions in Hong Kong, Prague and Oslo later.

I plan to stay longer in Oslo, in order to contribute and participate different projects with friends and new friends. In the upcoming year, I would like to continue to collaborate in order to develop the second film of “Genetic Salon”. I will invite people from different fields, especially outside of the art field, to participate in the project, for instance: performance, translation and prop production.

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Website: yushukpui.com