Chong Gu works with people, building materials, land, and texts. Their transdisciplinary process, hinged on hand model-making, frames diasporic domesticity and internalized trauma. Tracing social, spatial, and material constructs of our urbanity, Gu’s work wrestles between axioms and senses, molding rooms for incremental resistance shared amongst heterogeneous communities.
Guhas been organizing with Red Canary Song since 2021. Together with their collective, Gu has brought together communities inside massage parlors, on sidewalks, and in parks across New York City. Their work has activated institutional spaces at Storefront for Art and Architecture, Abrons Arts Center, Asian/Pacific/American Institute and Center for Sexuality and Gender Studies at NYU, etc.
Occasionally a writer, they have published writings in MIT’s Thresholds and Yale’s Paprika! amongst others. Gu was a member of the 2024 Bandung Residency co-organized by Asian American Arts Alliance and Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts.
At MacDowell, Gu reflected and continued their architectural research on Transient Homemaking, to be published on e-flux. Prior research from the body of work were included in MIT’s Thresholds 52: DISAPPEARANCE, as well as in the 2024 exhibition "Flower Spa: Solidarity Outside In" at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York.
Portrait by Eileen Emond
