Cherrie Yu is a 25 year old artist born in Xi’an, China. She currently lives and works from Chicago, IL. She holds a bachelor degree in English Literature at the College of William and Mary, and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has shown work at Chicago Cultural Center, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Links Hall and Mana Contemporary Chicago. She has been an artist in residence at ACRE, Contemporary Calgary Museum, and a visiting artist at Emory University. Her films have been screened at Satellite Art Show, Helena Anrather Gallery, Heaven Gallery and Virginia Commonwealth University. She is the awardee of the 2020 Kala Art Institute Media Award Fellowship, and will be a artist in residence at Yaddo Foundation in 2021. Yu was an artist in residence at the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation in early 2021.

My works are ontological inquiries in film, video and choreography. The past two years I worked with archive and translation to explore how the quotidian and the extraordinary can be rewritten outside of context. In recent works I started involving other people more actively in my work, from famous choreographers who now only exist in archival footages, to people I encounter on the street of Chicago. My practice wants to be utilitarian, and I strive to make art that can be practiced, and understood by anybody. The labor of art, for me, is the desire to communicate, and the act of reaching out. At this particular time, I work towards the reclamation of intimacy and empathy at a time of great alienation.